


Black Is The Colour

by Jenwryn



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Next Generation, Romance, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-02-17
Updated: 2009-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 60,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new, dubious Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher; conspiracy theories; the Resurrection Stone; the Witch of Endor; and a few dozen other things... plus the Next Generation kids caught right up in the middle of it. Result? Chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Duel In The Forest

**Author's Note:**

> Cue The Long-Winded Notes: Regular readers of my fan fiction will know that canon and I have an up-and-down kind of relationship; we're in love, but I'm not very faithful, I suppose you could say. With this story, however, I have actually set out to be as true-to-canon as plot will allow. A fair way through my first draft, however, my attention was drawn to the fact that JKR had thrown a few more tidbits in our direction - which meant that suddenly I didn't have 'merely' the Epilogue to work with, but also a kind of "oral canon". Mostly this wasn't a terrible tragedy: I had done quite a good job of guessing details about the various Weasley grandchildren, and the biggest nuisance was adapting myself to new names. For example, my Dominique actually began life as an 'Own Character' with a different name, but all three of us (she, my muse, and myself) have survived the name change.
> 
> There is, however, one place where I have chosen to diverge from JKR's "oral canon": the case of Mrs Draco Malfoy. According to JKR, Draco actually married Astoria Greengrass, the younger sister of the Slytherin Daphne Greengrass. Well, not in this story. In this story the wife of Draco Malfoy, and the mother of his son Scorpius, is not Astoria at all, but a witch of foreign extraction. She is a minor yet integral part of my plot, story, and universe, and I'm afraid I just couldn't give her up. Consider it the indulgence of a fan fiction writer with a weakness for Own Characters.
> 
> P.S. The prophecy does have relevance. Honest.

Dominique's Prophecy

_Issue of the present will be founder of the past:  
Where those lines meet life intersects.  
At the moment of return the issue of the past  
Is renewed into the future of the present  
As bloodlines knit impossibilities.  
Then shall the true heir to Merlin arise;  
Then shall the die be cast -  
He who controls the Heir, controls the present,  
He who controls the present, controls the past,  
And he who controls the past, controls the future._

 

**I: A Duel In The Forest**

It won't surprise anyone to hear that it all began in the Forbidden Forest. Most things do, in one way or another, at least in the lives of the more adventurous of Hogwart's students. Of course, it goes without saying that none of them were supposed to be there. Not the sixteen-year-olds crouched in the sparse underbrush with a certain Invisibility Cloak concealing them; not the Slytherin blundering his way towards them; and most assuredly not the two younger boys spying from behind an old, gnarled tree, watching the small clearing anxiously.

Probably the sixteen-year-olds were to blame for it all; no doubt that would be how an authority figure would see it. Sixth Years should know better, they would declare loftily, those who are older and so theoretically wiser. How nice it must be to view the world with such black and white simplicity! But, on the other hand, what more could you expect from a sixteen-year-old boy with a father happy to dose out advice along the lines of don't duel anyone 'til you've learned how...? As for the girl - well - to try and debate which of the two were more mischief-prone is an argument best left to those more with more organised minds than mine. As it was, the girl seemed the more relaxed, and it was she who was singing; her clear voice wound upwards with ease amongst the lower branches of the dark trees swaying languidly around them. It was an old folk song, taught to her by paternal grandmother, and quite pleasant to the ears:

‘Black is the colour of my true love's hair  
His lips are lips are like some roses fair  
He has the sweetest smile and the gentlest hands...'

There was a decidedly less pleasant sound as her companion jammed his elbow into her side, and gave her a sour look. ‘Would it kill you to sing a different song, Meeks?'

Dominique elbowed him right back, almost sending him tumbling from the Cloak's protection, and grinned. ‘Oh, but I thought you liked that song. Didn't I hear you tell Ophelia Wood just this morning how nicely she was singing it at breakfast?'

‘Only because I couldn't think of a better way to shut her up, short of hexing her, and you know it,' he muttered. ‘Girl's a menace.'

‘But you do know that she was singing about you, dear, sweet, adored Jamie?' teased Dominique, and tweaked a lock of her best friend's unruly black hair.

James Potter groaned. ‘That's what was so menacing about it; she's going to give me grief on the team this year, I can see it coming. Can't you pick something else to sing?'

‘I don't see why I have to sing at all. Why don't you?'

‘Gregory Goyle isn't going to come traipsing through the forest to hear me sing, Weasley. And you know this won't work unless he's here minus his cronies. Sure, we could have some fun hexing the lot of them but... Goyle on his own is so much simpler, don't you think?'

She looked more than a little bit miffed. ‘I still can't believe he'd actually think that I could fancy him. He looks like he got dropped on his head as a baby.'

James snickered. ‘Maybe he was. Have you ever met his old man? Goyle senior? The one who was at school with my old man? He's the type who would drop a-'

‘Sshh.' She swung her hand onto James's knee and squeezed, indicating silence. ‘He's coming.'

The pair beneath the Invisibility Cloak fell silent and watched as Goyle appeared in the small clearing, looking around for Dominique Weasley with a greedy expression on his face. He seemed to expect that the one-eighth Veela would be waiting for him, probably gift wrapped or something. Dominique made a gagging noise beneath the Cloak at the thought, and the noise made the Slytherin snap his eyes around in their direction.

‘Weasley?' he asked gruffly, clearly starting to get a bit doubtful about the whole thing. ‘Weasley, are you here?'

‘Oh, you bet I am,' she hissed from beneath the Cloak, and before he could blink she'd Stunned him. He fell with a loud clomp. After a half-heartbeat's wavering, Dominique and James pulled the Cloak from around them and hurried to Goyle's side, squatting to their haunches, and started searching his pockets briskly.

‘YOU'VE GOT DAD'S CLOAK!'

The outraged cry cut through the clearing. Sharing a glance swiftly the Sixth Years rose to their feet with their wands pointing in the direction of the cry before they'd even had time to realise who they were pointing at: Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy stood in front of them, Al positively shaking with indignation.

‘You've got Dad's Cloak!' he repeated at the top of his lungs, own wand drawn and pointed, quavering, in the direction of his older brother.

Malfoy, on the other hand, had registered tensely that James and Dominique hadn't gotten around to lowering their wands yet. ‘Al...' he cautioned.

‘Shuddup, Mal,' muttered Albus testily and continued to glare with righteous anger at his big brother. ‘You stole it!'

James groaned. ‘I did not, you little squirt. He gave it to me.'

‘I don't believe you! I asked Dad about it over the holidays and he said that none of us could have it, because we'd just argue. Said he was planning on giving it to Teddy next birthday!'

Dominique rolled her eyes, shoved her wand away in her robes, and lowered herself back down onto her haunches, muttering something about ‘little brothers'. James let his wand sink too, and tilted his head to one side. ‘Okay. So maybe I... borrowed it. But it's not like Dad uses it anyway. He won't even notice it's gone, you know? And I'll be putting it back at the end of term anyway - all you have to do is keep your great flapping mouth shut. This cretin,' he nudged Goyle's Stunned form, ‘nicked something of mine at the end of last year, okay? The Cloak seemed the simplest way to get it back.'

Around them the trees rustled and muttered while Albus stood there, teetering on the edge of looking rebellious, but before he could say anything his best friend brushed a lock of straight blonde hair from out of his eyes and piped up, ‘What'll you do for us if we stay stumm then, eh?'

Dominique, who was still searching Goyle's robes with a look of distinct distaste on her face - how many pockets did one fat Slythern need, anyway? - paused to smile wickedly up at the Fifth Years. Batting her eyelashes mockingly she crooned, ‘Oh, it's more about what we'll do to you if you don't keep your mouth shut. You know James and I are more than adept at the most intriguingly mischievous range of magic nowadays, Mal. Do you like your anatomies as they are, lads?'

Malfoy and Albus Potter exchanged a distinctly uneasy glance: they knew Dominique well enough to know she didn't believe in empty threats.

‘Scum's waking up,' continued the girl in an undertone, prodding Goyle and giving James a significant look. James nodded hastily, pulled his wand back out and pointed it at Goyle. With the mutter of a spell - which must have verged on unintelligible even to his wand: Albus and Scorpius could barely make out the Accio - what looked like a thickly folded piece of old brown parchment came flying from the Slytherin's robes. ‘Gotcha!' bellowed James happily and, before the younger boys could see what it was, he hit it away inside his own clothes. Half a second later he'd whipped his father's Invisibility cloak back around himself and Dominique, and his disembodied voice was advising in a laughing tone, ‘I'd run if I were you two ratbags. Brains here is about to wake up and he might misinterpret things if he finds you gawking down at him.'

As though to punctuate James's words, Gregory Goyle groaned. He blinked slowly, reached for his wand, and rose to his feet in an unsteady but furious kind of way.

_Oh, okay, so maybe it didn't begin in the Forbidden Forest. Maybe it began with Goyle and James's mutual vendetta. Or maybe it began with Rose Weasley's little heart-to-heart with her Head of House, or maybe with the prophecy that Dominique was busy pretending that she had never made. Come to think of it, maybe it had all begun twenty-five years earlier - or thirty - or- Ahh, you see how complex it can be? Start trying to pick the threads of history's carpet and you'll find it unravels in the most baffling way. So we'll stick to the old simplistic mantra and say that it all began that day in the Forbidden Forest._

_None of it was planned, or at least, none of what came next. It wasn't as though Albus picked it up deliberately; Merlin, he just wasn't that kind of kid. Fate? Destiny? The present rolling out in front of us like a pre-written parchment? You'll not be blamed for thinking any of those things, since the more improbable the circumstances, the more likely people are to give them some kind of mystical explanation. Hell, maybe It was even longing for company, though that seems far-fetched even to me; either way, it happened. Happened, and what more can I say? When Gregory Goyle rose groggily to his feet and sent Albus flying with a neatly placed jinx, the fifteen-year-old landed most gracelessly on the forest floor in a pile of soggy leaf debris, head spinning. When Albus stood back up again, a good deal of said debris had gotten into his clothes, sticking with damp, smelly little fingers to his clothes and squelching its way into the hem of his robes where they were unravelling from him having caught the thread the day before, on the Hogwarts' Express. The Stone was amongst the mulch. The Resurrection Stone. The second of the Hallows._

_There are some things that really ought be destroyed when one has the chance._

_Or at the very least, not left lying around on the forest floor..._

‘OI!' James bellowed, reappearing from beneath the Cloak in a sudden flash of injured family pride, ‘Pick on someone your own size you bloody menace!' He directed a hex at Gregory, nicely dodging one aimed right back at him, and as the bumps started to rise on Gregory's face their duel began in earnest.

Dominique was just fingering her wand and debating whether James's would be cross if she joined in the fun when the clearing was rocked by a fierce bang that made the very trees shake and sent the birds flying off into the distance with complaining shrieks. A woman appeared at the edge of the tree-line, a strange white wand gripped in her left hand and all of the boys - Gregory and James and Scorpius and Albus - frozen on the spot like statues. Quite comical statues, actually, if the circumstances had been different.

The unknown witch's voice was frosty. ‘Nice day for a stroll in the woods, was it? Nice day for a bit of cursing, hmm? I might be new to Hogwarts, boys, but I was under the distinct impression that Headmistress McGonagall had mentioned the Forbidden Forest as being just that - forbidden. Actually, I would rather have imagined that the name itself gave that away, it's rather self-explanatory.' She was glaring at the four of them with slate-grey eyes and her voice had such a strong, strange accent to it that Goyle in particular seemed to have a few seconds of trouble working out what it was she was saying, and if it were even English in the first place. If the witch noticed their difficulty, she gave no sign of it, but moved her wand specifically in the direction of Albus and Scorpius. With a twitch of it, yet not a word spoken, she returned feeling to their bodies. ‘You, and you,' she said, ‘have just lost your Houses ten points each for being out here. Which ones?'

For moment or two they didn't understand what her question meant, then they realised that she was asking which Houses? They stared at her in gobsmacked disbelief.

‘Er... Gryffindor,' answered Albus, his green eyes blinking rapidly and his eyebrows a little further up his forehead than they were normally. Clearly both his anger at his brother, and his pain from being jinxed, had evaporated in the face of a professor - for surely she had to be a professor - who couldn't place students in their proper Houses with just one glance.

‘And Slytherin,' added Malfoy, pointing with a self-explanatory mien at the small silver-and-green crest on his robes. He too had a bemused look on his face that verged awfully close to a sneer. What kind of teacher couldn't tell the uniforms apart at a glance?

‘Right,' said the teacher, completely unfazed to the looks on their faces, ‘Well, as of now you're library monitors. I was speaking to Madam Pince just this morning and she mentioned she could do with a hand. Report to her immediately, if you'd please, and tell her Professor Welsh sent you.'

‘Yes, Professor,' they muttered and hurried off, shooting furtive glances back at James and Goyle and the spot where they had last seen the now-invisible Dominique Weasley.

‘As for you two...' Professor Welsh turned her attention upon the older boys, releasing their frozen forms, and casting an intent glance at their uniforms. ‘Another Slytherin and Gryffindor, am I right? And the other badge?' She was motioning at James Potter with her pale wand.

James raised his eyebrows in a cockier version of his younger brother before half-grinning and glancing down at the badge on his chest with unconcealed pride. ‘Quidditch Captain, miss.'

‘Right' said the witch again, obviously indifferent. ‘Forty points from the pair of you for being here, for duelling, and for leading younger students astray. Names?'

‘James Potter.'

‘Gregory Goyle.'

The professor nodded, her eyes lingering with a peculiar darkish light, or at least so it seemed to him, upon James. ‘I'll be speaking to your Heads of Houses about your punishment. And now get back to the Castle.'

Goyle muttered something and headed off. James turned too, resolutely not looking at the place where he knew Dominique was, before pausing to ask with an impertinent grin, ‘So, where're you from, miss?'

‘Aotearoa,' the professor answered curtly. ‘New Zealand to you.'

She scanned her eyes around one last time, then waved James ahead of her, and out of the clearing.


	2. Common Room Chatter

James Potter sat in the Gryffindor common room, feet slung up over the arm of his sofa and his toes wriggling bare in the early September warmth. Or rather, he sprawled - _lounged_ \- leant back in the chair with the smooth class of his paternal grandfather and his mother combined, and with more than a small shot of Weasley mischief bred into the easy Potter arrogance. _Braggadocio_, his Aunt Hermione called it, but then, she always had been fond of oddball words. On the whole, though, the mischief had the upper hand over the swagger. It wasn't by chance that Uncle George was James's second-favourite uncle, and it was an open secret that said Uncle George kept James and Dominique well stocked with the latest Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, often still in the prototype stage. Hogwarts always had been George's preferred testing ground.

James was eating chocolate-chip-and-peppermint cookies from a large cardboard carton that his had sent him that morning - as though she thought he might already have eaten the great assortment of goodies she'd given him to take with him just the day before on the Hogwarts Express (he had). As he ate he tapped his foot to the music burbling from the wireless that someone had set up at the other end of the room, and was gazing at his younger brother with something a tad closer to contempt than perhaps he should have been.

‘You look like an absolute _grot_, Albus Severus. I can't believe you actually went straight to the library like Welsh said, rather than at least getting changed first. I mean, you've got half the forest floor on you and you stink like mushrooms and fungal rot, or something. I'm bloody amazed old Pince let you _near_ her precious books looking like that. It's a wonder she didn't collapse, the age she is.'

‘She almost did,' piped up their cousin Rose Weasley; Albus was doing his very best to ignore his brother, a long-suffering look on his face and his head bowed over a stack of Quidditch cards. Rose swivelled a little on her chair and looked at them with wide blue eyes from where she sat at a table playing Wizard's Chess with Madeleine Thomas. ‘You should have seen her face when he and that Mal arrived, James. I thought she was going to have a fit, but then they started babbling about Professor Welsh, and she just let them in. Oh, checkmate, by the way, Maddy,' she added breezily.

Madeleine looked sour.

Rose glanced back at the board fleetingly, and then finished, ‘I just can't believe you got detention on the second day of term.'

Rose's little brother Hugo sent a pillow moving wobbly through the air towards back at her head, complaining, ‘You sound like Mum.'

James pointed his wand lazily at the pillow and it zoomed off in another direction, much to Hugo's annoyance. Then he inspected a cookie critically before asking his cousin, ‘What d'you know about this Welsh then, Rosie?'

Rose ignored him for a moment, gazing intently at her chess pieces, which were muttering bloodthirstily amongst themselves, then made a move (the pieces roared with delight as they took out one of Madeleine's rooks) and shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Well, she's the new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher, isn't she? Don't you Potters ever listen to anything? - no meant offence, Lil-' (James's youngest sibling had looked up from where she sat on the floor near James's chair with a Potions textbook, and poked her tongue out) ‘-but seriously, Professor McGonagall told us all about it after the Sorting. Welsh is new, for Defence Against the Dark Arts, since old Professor Miller went and vanished, which you'd know, if you actually read the Daily Prophet. And we're getting a new Care Of Magical Creatures too, you know. Arriving some time this week. The Headmistress explained all that just before she announced that we'd be having a Yule Ball this year. Didn't you notice the need for dress robes in the school list, James?'

‘A Yule Ball?' He paused a cookie half-way to his mouth.

‘Yes... you really don't listen, do you? What were you doing after the Sorting?'

Rose had just been made the Fifth-Year Prefect for Gryffindor, and while she was normally a decent enough sort, James rather thought he could live without the disapproval she'd no doubt dump on him if he answered that question, since it was during and after the Sorting that he and Dominique had put together their plan for luring Goyle in the Forbidden Forest. Instead he just half-shrugged. ‘What's the Ball for?'

Rose moved a chess piece then answered simply, ‘Forty years since Uncle Harry was born.'

‘Oh, Merlin. Are you _serious_?' Both James and Albus looked somewhat depressed. James threw a cookie at Rose to vent his emotion, which, unlike Hugo's ill-fated pillow, hit her on the side of the head; she let out a cranky little yelp. Madeleine, who was somewhat rounded, picked it up from where it had fallen amongst all the captured chess pieces put to one side, and ate it, inserting through her mouthful the observation, ‘She talks funny. Welsh, I mean.'

‘She's from New Zealand,' announced James all-knowingly, pleased to have the conversation turned away from Yule Balls thrown in his famous father's honour. ‘I don't trust her.' And he threw another cookie at Rose for good measure, who this time knew it was coming and snatched it with super-fast reflexes out of the air before handing it over to her tubby friend.

‘You're just peeved cause she caught you duelling Goyle,' murmured Dominique from behind a grin as she bounced down the stairs from the girl's dorms, picking up with her usual intuition what he'd been talking about, even though she'd only heard the latter part of his comment. Inspecting his box of cookies, she selected just one, and then perched herself onto the arm of his chair. ‘At least she didn't twig about the Cloak though.'

Lily's head darted up from the fascinations of Third Year Potions. ‘You have Dad's Cloak?' she demanded in a low voice.

The Sixth Years ignored her; Albus gave her a kind of helpless-shruggy look.

‘What'd she make you do as punishment, anyway?' asked Dominique as she nibbled around the edges of the cookie; she hadn't seen him from the time Welsh had sent him off until dinner, and she'd already been sitting with Kitwin MacMillian when he'd finally arrived.

James laughed. ‘Silly cow sent me to the Head of House like you heard, didn't she? And you know our Professor Longbottom... he put me on detention every second evening helping out old Hagrid.'

Dominique joined him laughing. ‘Ohhh, that'll be just too tragic for words!'

‘Yeah, I'm gnashing my teeth. You've got to love Neville, though. He's just not into the whole punishment thing. Hasn't got the stomach for it, really.'

There was a physical pause amongst all the listening Gryffindors as they fell silent, trying to imagine bright-eyed, cheery Professor Longbottom as the beaten-up rebel leader that their parents had all told them stories about. The silence fell heavy about them, caught in a web of history, until they all seemed to shrug, giving up the nigh impossible and went back to focussing on the simpler matter of biscuit eating; James had eaten his fill and so the cookie box was being passed around to all and sundry.

‘Anyway,' he continued, ‘I guess I'd better put on a properly chagrined face tomorrow when we've got our first Defence Against The Dark Arts lesson, Meeks. No point letting Welsh know that I'm as happy as larry about it.'

‘D'you think Hagrid will mind if I tag along?' asked his best friend, brushing a strand of blonde hair off her face. ‘You know he said something about unicorns, and I still haven't seen one. My second-last year and not hide nor hair of them... It's pathetic.'

James shrugged and went back to gazing in irritation at his younger brother. ‘Al, you moron, why're you still here? Didn't I just finish telling you that you look like a grot?'

Al shrugged. ‘So? No point changing now, is there? Bit late, really? I mean, we've already had dinner...'

But his brother had spotted the hem of Albus's cloak. ‘How the hell have you managed that already? Didn't Kreacher poke around in all your stuff before you packed it? I know he did in mine... and you do know, you dope, that if you left your stuff out at night where the house-elves could actually find it, then they'd fix that for you, right?' James had seen the Fifth Years' dorm - it already looked like the kind of place Aurors would be required, and the boys had only slept there one night.

Hugo, who like Lily had homework spread out in front of him, but who unlike Lily wasn't making so much as a pretence of working on it, looked slightly disapproving. ‘_We_ don't have house-elves at home.'

‘Now who sounds like Mum?' asked Rose without glancing up from her chessboard.

James, Albus and Dominique exchanged a knowing glance; they were used to Hugo parroting Auntie Hermione's diatribes about elvish rights.

‘Well,' said James calmly, ‘If you had Kreacher like we do, you wouldn't be so stuffy about it. Anyway, you, Albus, still look like a grimy little git.' And with a flick of his wand he brought his cookie box levitating back towards him - thus jerking it rapidly out of the hands of some tubby little First Year who hadn't yet worked out that_ sharing _meant _leaving some for everyone else_ \- handed it to Dominique and then leant forwards rapidly, snatching up the hem of his brother's school robes.

‘Hey, watch it!' shouted Al, more than a little embarrassed as his brother pulled the hem upwards, ‘You want everyone to see my underwear?'

‘Not particularly, seeing as they just had dinner and it might make them lose their hearty Gryffindor stomach contents. What the hell is all this junk, Al?' Without waiting for an answer, and blithely ignoring Albus's threats to hex him - after all, even Albus wasn't dumb enough to try a stunt like that with James's wingman Dominique perched right beside him with an amused look on her face - James started pulling out leaves and twigs, and tossing them into the fireplace. Someone had already set a small blaze going there, though frankly, James thought that was more than a bit premature since the Autumn weather hadn't really kicked in yet - probably it had been a First Year, playing about with spells. Either way, he was tossing junk merrily onto the flames with a disgusted look on his face when he came to a small, cracked stone. At the last minute, he stopped the throwing motion of his hand, a strange look on his face. ‘Only you could get a bloody rock in the hem of your robes,' he muttered, discomforted, and then threw it at his brother instead. Albus caught it clumsily, and looked at it, shrugging, but he too seemed unable to throw it onto the fire, so dropped it into the depths of a pocket instead.

Not long after, the empty cookie box having followed the leaves and dirt to a cremated end, James yawned, stretched, unfolded his lean, long frame from the chair, and yawned again. ‘I don't know about you lot,' he said, ‘but I've had it.' And with an affectionate punch at Dominique's arm, and a friendly ruffle of his little sister's hair, he disappeared up the stairs towards the boys' dorms.

Dominique watched him go then shrugged slightly, pointed her wand in the direction of the fire until the flames died down to the barest of glimmers, and then asked brightly, ‘So, Al, how did the merry book wardening go in the library?'

‘He completely muffed it,' answered Rose in his stead, and the group of girls at her table, watching the chess match, grinned. ‘I think Pince'll be glad to see the end of him. The stress can't be good for her, witch of her age.'

‘Not as bad as it is for me,' muttered Albus unhappily, ‘but you know, we're stuck there for a whole stupid fortnight, apparently. A fortnight! Putting books on shelves? How boring can you get?' He looked thoroughly miserable.

Rose, however, was suddenly possessed by a bright, happy expression, as though she'd just been attacked by the most genius of ideas. Without saying another word all she did was announce ‘Mate' to Madeleine - who groaned - then scooped up her chess pieces into the velvet bag her father had given her to keep them in, and hurried up to the girls' dorm with a positively glowing look on her face.

‘Do you think she just discovered the thirteenth use for dragon blood?' muttered Albus with a snigger as she hurried past him.

‘Uncle Charlie already did that, you dolt!' her voice shouted down at him, and then he heard the door close shut behind her.

Albus looked perplexed. ‘He did? Really? Why doesn't anyone ever tell me anything?'

Dominique just laughed. ‘She's pulling your chain, Al. The Wizengamot ruled that the spicing up of alcoholic beverages didn't count. Although,' she stood up, stretching gracefully, and grinned, ‘I fail to see why. _Much_ more useful than the other twelve. G'night all.'

‘Night, Meeks,' they chorused, especially the tiny little First Year boys who were watching her with enormous eyes as she wandered up the stairs.

Her relatives saw the little boys' looks of admiration and grinned at each other knowingly.

‘Don't bother,' advised Hugo with a bored shrug, ‘she's way out of your league. Besides, James'd punch your lights out. Or worse, she would.'

But clearly, they hadn't heard a word he'd said.

 


	3. The New D.A.D.A. Professor

The Defence Against The Dark Arts classroom always altered personality with a new Professor and, although no longer cursed since the death of Tom Riddle, it still seemed to have an unusually high staff turn-over compared to the other Hogwarts' teaching posts. Pragmatically viewed, this can probably be explained by the fact that DADA teachers tended to have less than safe extracurricular hobbies. Like Professor Miller, who had taught at the school since James's second year, and who had had much too much of a softness for vampires, a softness that had left him a little - _dry_ \- during the summer break. Or at least, that was what they said. Some whispered that he was in St Mungo's, yet others muttering that he was one himself now, scampering around somewhere in continental Europe. Either way, he wasn't coming back to teach.

Which explained the presence of Professor Welsh. As always, when they had a new teacher, the Gryffindor and Slytherin Sixth Years were already seated well before class was due to start, with curious expressions on their faces. The room, which was as familiar to James and Dominique as their own common room, arched up above them. Now it was lined with cases of richly bound books, as though Pince had moved part of her library here, and shrunken heads peeped out of glass domes amongst them. On the walls were fierce and ugly masks covered in tattoos: Dominique wasn't exactly sure that they weren't from real dead people, and James wasn't entirely sure that they were actually _dead_, since he was positive he'd seen the eyes moving to watch him. Above it all had an odd collection of bones - which appeared to make up large birds with stunted wings.

‘Moas,' said a loud voice from nowhere, and a second later Professor Welsh appeared at the top of the stairs and leant against the railings, looking down at them all looking up. In the light of day, and minus her dark cloak, Welsh was a relatively handsome woman. Her skin was a dark honey colour, her nose broad, and her eyes a fathomless grey. Her hair only went to her shoulders and was black as night, but wildly wavy. One of her fingers was pointing upwards towards the bones. She continued talking, ‘A magical bird that not one of you will have heard of, no doubt, because the British Wizarding Education system keeps your heads bound up in your own little corner of the world even though Magic spreads all across the globe. I bet none of you can list even half a dozen of the other wizarding schools.'

It took a minute for the class to realise that this was not a statement, so much as a question for which an answer was expected, then Dominique rose her hand and answered promptly, ‘Beauxbatons.'

‘And Durmstrang,' grunted Goyle.

Welsh nodded, and then there was a small pause.

‘Ah - the Salem Institute for Witches,' suggested Ophelia Wood quickly.

‘What about that school in Japan, I don't remember the name?' added James.

Dominique glanced sideways at him and raised an eyebrow.

‘I heard Mal mention it. You know his Mum's Asian.'

Then there was another small pause, followed by much whispering, as the class realised that the professor was right, and they couldn't think up a sixth school.

Welsh made a small _humph_-ing noise, but didn't look surprised. ‘Well, for your information, there are schools not only in France, Bulgaria, America and Japan as you know, but also in Central Africa, South Africa, Brazil, Mongolia, India, Egypt, Anatolia, and Oceania. Homework is ten lines on each school including their founders and famous students.'

_Homework, before class had even begun? What the_-_? _

James put up his hand.

Welsh's eyes were cool. ‘Yes, James?' Apparently the Antipodean wasn't in the habit of gracing students with the title _mister_.

‘Excuse me, Professor, but isn't this Defence Against the Dark Arts, not a history of wizarding educational systems?'

There was a snicker, especially from the Gryffindor side of the room.

The professor didn't so much as blink. ‘How thoughtful of you to bring that up, James. You can each add another ten lines per school, discussing the various kinds of magic to stem from each. Which schools favour the so-called Dark Arts. Which schools have produced wizards or witches who reputedly abused their knowledge.'

‘Reputedly?' inquired James, his voice innocent but the look in his eyes anything but.

‘Everything is relative, James. There's no such thing as black and white in magic, something I'm sure your father could tell you all about. You _are _the son of Harry Potter, are you not?' Her eyes were like steel.

James nodded. It was creeping him out slowly, the inequality of the first-name basis she was on with him, and which he'd never _really_ experienced before with a teacher, and the look on her face as she watched him. Everyone in the classroom was looking at him now; Dominique had creases between her eyebrows as she watched Professor Welsh descending the stairs.

‘Well,' said the teacher, ‘As I understand it - and we won't even _begin _to discuss his past actions - your father is Head of the Auror Department of the British Ministry of Magic, right?' She seemed agitated despite the fact that her face was emotionless; it made her accent thicker.

James nodded again, not really trusting himself to speak in case he landed more detention, since he couldn't, as Quidditch captain, afford to cut into practise time.

‘Well then, he sends witches and wizards out into the world, day in, day out, to apprehend other witches and wizards who may or may not have used so-called Dark Arts; who may or may not have cursed or hurt other witches and wizards, or perhaps Muggles. And how do they apprehend them?'

‘Well,' started James, and it was practically his father speaking, ‘They try to talk to them first, and then if they have to they-'

‘They curse and hurt them,' stated Welsh calmly. ‘You see, James, there's no such thing as black and white. Open your book to Chapter One,' she continued, and the class jumped slightly as it realised that she was suddenly looking at them all, and the students scurried to obey.

*

An hour later, when he was shoving his book back into his bag, James glared at the classroom door as they passed through it and snapped, ‘What a load of rubbish. _No such thing as black and white, ask you father, so-called Dark Arts..._' He impersonated Welsh's accent quite well and the kids around him snickered again as they heard it. He gave them an irritated look and hurried along the corridor with Dominique keeping pace quickly at his side.

She seemed concerned. ‘I know. A few more steps and we can take the "Defence Against" bit off the front of the class name.' She held up the textbook and looked at it in irritation. ‘I hadn't read any of it yet, you know, I'm not Rosie, but - do you think it's all like that first chapter?' She flicked through it as they walked, her brow more and more creased.

James glanced at it and shrugged. ‘Oh, that's harmless enough. It's about time we got some decent DADA, I'll be the first to admit that, but I just don't like her. There's something fishy about her and - did you see all that junk on her walls? What is that, anyway? Voodoo?'

Rose Weasley ran full-on into him, spluttered, and snapped, ‘Voodoo's a perfectly valid form of magic, James Potter, and you need to look where you're going,' and hurried off to her next class.

Dominique laughed. ‘That kid's mad; I think it's inherited. Anyway, the most offensive thing about these books - have you seen where they're printed?' She held the cover open and waved it under his nose. ‘_Angus and Bobbinson_,' she read aloud, ‘_Auckland, Hobart and Capetown_. She can't even use British textbooks. As though our stuff isn't good enough for her!'

There was a small, dry cough and James and Dominique glanced up to find the Headmistress observing them. ‘I do hope you aren't criticising a professor's choice of textbooks, Miss Weasley.'

Dominique half-shrugged, half looked defiant. ‘You - you don't think it would make sense for Hogwarts to use British books, Professor McGonagall?'

Minerva McGonagall smiled. ‘Your mother doesn't seem to think so. Do you know, Miss Weasley, that every year, exactly a month before the textbook list is sent out, I receive a letter from your mother making a passionate case for why more textbooks written by French witches and wizards should be utilised in this school?'

Dominique blushed slightly. ‘Well, that's Maman for you, but-'

‘No buts, Miss Weasley. Nor from you, Mr Potter,' she added firmly, for James had opened his mouth. ‘I can assure you that all textbooks used for teaching in this school are approved personally by myself and I don't believe in judging a book by it's cover nor, for that matter, by it's origins. A lesson you children could do well to remember: the surface of things do not make the whole.' She gave them both an intent look, as though there were some great mystery of life attached to that, then added, ‘Don't forget that you have detention with Hagrid this evening, Mr Potter,' and then the elderly witch moved off down the hall.

James and Dominique watched her go, the blonde muttering at the old woman's back, ‘Officious old bird.'

Her best friend shrugged. ‘Oh well, she's right though. At least we've got Hagrid to look forwards to. He's always good for a lark.'


	4. Rose's Request

Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy sat at a high table in the library, sorting books methodically and, if truth be told, unnecessarily slowly, into two piles: those which required mending, and those which did not. Naturally Madam Pince wouldn't let them do the repairing themselves, and every now and then she would bustle over and look at them critically as though she thought that even the simple act of sorting and stacking might be a bit much for them.

‘How many more days of this?' muttered Al, flicking absently through a massive tome entitled _An Astronomical History of the Irish Night Sky_ without noticing the tear down its spine, and placing it onto the "okay" pile.

‘Twelve,' groaned Mal. Placing _Constellations Of Consternation: Anatolian Astronomy_ onto the "mend" pile (it had a page loose from its bindings), he glanced up towards the door, and murmured, ‘Here comes trouble.' He ran a hand self-consciously across his short cut hair.  
Rose Weasley, for once minus her customary gaggle of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw girl friends, sidled up towards the two boys with a look on her face that on anyone else would have been described as furtive. It seemed downright furtive on her too, except that, so far as Al and his friend knew, Rose just didn't _do _furtive, and so it had to be something else, and they were just mistaken.

‘Will Madam Pince mind if I sit down with you?' she asked in a low voice, stroking the bag she held beneath her arm in a quite unconscious manner.

Albus shrugged. ‘I don't reckon she cares much, so long as we don't stop working, and you don't help us. Besides, she likes _you._'

Rose beamed at the thought and then sat, placing her bag gently in her lap and wrapping her hands protectively around it with the tender care of a young mother protecting her newborn.

‘What've you got there?' asked Scorpius curiously, gaze darting with interest from the book he was inspecting towards his best friend's cousin.

‘None of your business,' the girl snapped, and then watched them work for a second before asking, ‘Is this all you do? Stack books?'

‘Nah.' It was Albus who answered; Scorpius had gone a funny colour in the wake of her snapping at him and seemed intent on the contents of _Meteorological Features of Lower Northern Cornwall Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow_. ‘We shelve them as well.'

‘Really? And... do you shelve everywhere? I mean, just in the regular parts of the library, or,' she lowered her voice, ‘in the Restricted Section too?'

For a moment both boys' hands faltered at their work; Albus dropped a book with a _thwunk _to the floor. It rang out terribly loudly in the dusty silence of the library, and Madam Pince glanced over at them with an aggravated look on her face. Albus scooped it up rapidly, brushed it off, and shoved it onto the "to be repaired" pile with the desperate hope that it had already been mangled like that _before _he'd dropped it.  
‘Why do you want to know?' asked Scorpius, who seemed to have gotten over her snapping at him, and also over his shock, and was working at a new and rapid speed as he spoke, though his eyes remained fixed on the piles of books as though he didn't quite dare meet hers.

Rose looked bothered, then apparently overcame some kind of inner battle before saying, at almost a whisper, ‘Well, it's like this. I was speaking to Professor Longbottom about our OWLS and-'

‘Our OWLS?' protested Albus, ‘But they're ages away, Rosie. You do know it's only September, right?'

His cousin looked offended. ‘Yes, Albus. And _you _do know that we're in our Fifth Year, _right_?'

Scorpius darted a look at her, and rather thought that she was about to storm off, so he said quickly in a mollifying voice, ‘Go on, what about our OWLS?' Unlike Albus, he wasn't dumb enough to have forgotten what a useful ally the Weasley girl could be when the said exams got closer; if he could get her help, he might get good enough grades to make even his father happy. Besides-

Rose looked at him suspiciously. ‘It's not that I'm taking as many as my Mum did, you know. Even if I'd wanted to, it wouldn't have been physically possible, since they wouldn't give me permission. And frankly, I'm just not that interested, I mean, I have other things to be doing besides _only _books, you know. But I _am _doing more subjects than normal, and Professor Longbottom thought that that might get a bit much this year, so he suggested that instead of going to class for one of my subjects, I'm to do a kind of self-governed research project instead, you know, and then sit the exams at the end.'

Scorpius looked impressed.

Albus rolled his eyes. ‘What does that have to with us? Just because you're on some kind of crusade to make yourself Grandma Weasley's favourite...'

‘Don't be a complete idiot, Al,' she retorted archly, then demanded of his friend, ‘And why are you looking at me like that?'

Mal kept sorting books, his voice quiet. ‘I'm wondering what your paper will be on if you need the Restricted Section for it? What is it that you want us to get you?'

Albus blinked; he wasn't as lateral a thinker as his friend. ‘Good question. And why don't you just get a permission slip then?'

Rose flushed. ‘It's not Dark Arts or anything. You have to understand, not all the books in the Restricted Section are bad, some of them are just really, really ancient and Pince doesn't want First Years spilling pumpkin juice on them or something. But I'm really careful with books, and parchments, and things; she'd never even know I had it, really. And I promise if you get caught, I'll take the blame.'

Oddly, Scorpius believed that.

‘Still doesn't explain why you can't just ask,' insisted Albus.

‘Well...' she looked awfully uncomfortable, but was covering it with irritation. ‘It's more of a personal interest side-shoot, so to speak. I mean, you can only get a permission slip for something actually totally relevant for the work, and I don't quite know if it'll end up relevant or not, and I suspect probably not, and besides - well, _really_, Albus, does it matter?'

‘What do you want?' asked Malfoy softly.

‘_The History of the Necromancer of Endor,_' she said in a small voice.

Albus made a sort of giggling noise. ‘I'm sorry - as in where the Ewoks live?'

Rose groaned; Scorpius, whose childhood had quite clearly not been graced with the presence of Muggle popular culture, least of all _Star Wars_, looked momentarily confused.

‘Fine,' corrected Albus with a continuing grin, ‘I know that's not what you mean. But still - isn't that a Muggle Bible story?'

‘The Bible doesn't belong to Muggles,' snapped Rose, ‘But yes, it is. From the first Book of Samuel, in the Old Testament. Or really, it's one of the Jewish history books, the third in The "Former Prophets", or the "Deuteronomic History".And you can call Endor _En-dûr _if I'm going to have to listen to lame George Lucas jokes the whole time. But... I'm actually surprised you'd heard of it at all. I mean, I didn't think you Potters went in for religion.'

‘We don't,' he agreed, ‘But once when Dad was playing Happy Families with Uncle Dursley,' his fingers made quotation marks around the term ‘uncle' and then hurried back to work as Pince's eyes caught him, ‘we had to go to church with them. I don't think they go normally either, frankly. It was hideous. All stuck on those uncomfortable pews listening to some fat Muggle yabbering on about sin and necromancy and stuff - because that's what this Witch of Endor story's about, right? - and lots of waving his hands around like a weirdo.' Albus's eyes had a dark glint to them. ‘I'm sure they picked that Sunday to invite us because they _knew _that's what he'd be talking about. As if magic were bad or something...'

Rose sniffed primly. ‘Well. For your information, Necromancy _is _bad.'

‘I didn't think Necromancy existed,' said Malfoy with the air of one who thought he knew rather a lot about the Dark Arts and was startled to see he'd missed something.

‘Well,' she admitted, ‘Actually, it doesn't exist. Everyone knows it's impossible to bring back the dead, which is technically what it means. I mean, necromancy, _nekromanteia, _or the Black Art, as Muggles know it, which is to say, prophecy by calling up the dead, that doesn't exist. But Infiri and stuff, Muggles would probably chuck that into the Necromancy box, since they seem to think that it's just any magic to do with dead people, you know? Anyway, I want to read it. _The History, _I mean. Because it's the original.'

‘The _original_-original?' asked Albus, awed. ‘As in, from however many years ago Abraham and whatsit were around?'

‘David and Saul,' corrected Scorpius without thinking and when they both stared at him in surprise he added, ‘What? I have a Mu- I mean, I listen in Muggle studies, you know. And we _did _do Muggle interpretations of World Religions last year. Anyway,' he turned to Rose, ‘The original happens to be in _our _Restricted Section?'

She nodded. ‘Yes. The extra subject I'm taking is Muggle Studies, you know. It seemed like the easiest one to do my own work on, all things considered. Much more so than, say, Transfiguration or Arithmancy or Potions. Mum's parents are a priceless source of information, and Mum's not bad herself, actually. Anyway, there's this real odd way that Muggles look at religion and magic and...' she paused, before summing up simply, ‘I'd just like to read that text.'

‘Wouldn't it be in - Aramaic or something?'

‘Hebrew,' she agreed.

‘You don't speak Hebrew.'

She smirked. ‘Actually, I do. Well, a little, anyway, enough to get by with a written text, if I've got a good dictionary. Old Mr Goldman started teaching me over the summer holidays. I'm already decent in Yiddish; it amuses him no end. See, some of us spend our time doing more than sitting around staring at the walls, Albus.'

Her cousin was irritated. ‘What would you know about how I spent the holidays? I'll have you know we went camping.'

‘Oooo,' she teased. ‘How exciting for you.'

Scorpius gave him an odd look, envious. ‘Yeah, exciting.'

‘Why? What'd you do then?' his best friend demanded.

Scorpius stacked books faster. ‘Nothing. My dad, he was busy, you know, and Mum - Mum doesn't get out much.' He shut his mouth, pursed it, then added, ‘Anyway, I'll get you the text.'

Rose beamed and, still stroking her bag, stood up and hurried off.


	5. Detention With Hagrid

Eight p.m. sharp and James knocked loudly on the door of Hagrid's hut. The teenager heard a grumble, then the jangling rattle of kettles and pots, before the half-giant's bushy great face poked out at him with a smile. Admittedly, Hagrid's smile lessened slightly at the sight of Dominique smiling right back at him cheerily, her blonde hair braided up around her head tightly and her cloak loose around her on the still-warm September evening.

‘Don't think yer supposed to be here, Dom'nick,' the gamekeeper muttered.

Dominique beamed up at him endearingly. ‘Oh, go on, Hagrid. There's no rule to say I can't have detention too. Besides, let me tell you a secret...' She rose onto her tippy toes and whispered up at him, ‘I was in the Forbidden Forest too, you know, so _technically_, I ought to have gotten detention too, and I'd feel bad if our Jamie here had to slave and not me.'

Hagrid grunted, but grinned through his beard despite himself, muttering, ‘Aw, well, I always were a softie... suppose it can't hurt none. Alright then, just lemme get my coat.' A second later he stomped out with his bearskin jacket wrapped around him, despite being uncalled for in the weather, and large slobbering dog following closely at his heels. Then Hagrid paused on the top step, made a "wait-a-moment" motion, and vanished back inside. While he was gone the Great Dane snuffled enthusiastically at Dominique, who scruffed him between his brindle ears with her fingertips, and then at James, who scrounged around in a pocket and offered the hound half a crust left over from his breakfast. The dog gobbled it down, jowls wobbling, while the girl raised her eyebrows slightly and asked in her dangerously-sweet voice, ‘And you think _Albus_ carries junk around?'

‘Boney expects me to bring him stuff!' James protested and then grinned enthusiastically as Hagrid reappeared, carrying a large gleaming lamp in one hand and, to the Sixth Year's delight, a large crossbow in the other.

‘Merlin's beard, Hagrid, what're we doing? Hunting manticores?'

Hagrid scratched his beard nervously. ‘Ah - erm - nah, nothing like that, er... just in case, you know... there's been some funny types round lately.'

Dominique and James exchanged a glance. There was something odd about the way the old fellow had answered that, and - well - how could there be funny types around Hogwarts? Wasn't that impossible? Surely no-one could get in without permission, or at the very least being noticed? Or didn't the Forbidden Forest count?

Hagrid coughed in an embarrassed way and without a word they followed him down a moonlit path leading from his hut, past a pumpkin patch and some slightly ill-looking crab-apple trees (it was probably the Flitchbeetles he'd shown them so proudly before the end of last term that were causing the damage, thought James knowingly), and towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest. It loomed up around them like a great big black beast and the trees whispered amongst themselves ominously. Ominous was the perfect word for the Forbidden Forest, actually. _Om-eee-nus..._

Dominique shivered to herself as they crossed the threshold of smaller undergrowth on the forest's edge, where scraggly bushes reached upwards towards the dark night sky. James leant towards her and whispered, ‘Want a hand?' and offered her his to hold.

She smirked wickedly at him, blue-black shadows moving over her face as the leaves swayed above them. ‘Want a broken nose, Potter?'

James grinned back, relieved at her stubborn toughness because it meant that he had to be even tougher in comparison, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets where he could reach his wand quickly if he needed to. Dominique, on the other hand, pulled hers out and murmured, ‘_Lumos._'

Hagrid glanced at the sudden silverly light, the girl's face opalescent in the strange mix of wandlight and the glow of the storm-lantern, and nodded approvingly. ‘Atta girl, Dom'nick. Now, tonight we're just doing the rounds and - er - I got a bit a business so...' He pointed vaguely right down a broad, well-defined path. ‘If you two'll head that way, you'll find our two paths make a kind of circle, and I'll meet you in the middle, by a big hollow tree. Yeh can't miss it. It's a bad tempered brute and I bet it'll swear blue murder when you get there.'

‘A tree that swears?' asked Dominique disbelievingly, while James gave the gamekeeper a searching look and enquired, ‘Split up?'

Had Hagrid lost his marbles? It wasn't impossible. As beloved as the family friend was, James knew he must have been pushing one hundred, and surely even half-giants got senile sooner or later.

‘You'll be fine, an' Boney'll keep you company,' grinned Hagrid with a firm slap on James's back. ‘It's a shame you haven't got yer Dad's cloak, though,' he added, then headed off to the left.

‘Yeah, shame,' lied James. He watched Hagrid's broad shoulders vanish off into the shadows away from them, exchanged a quick curious look with the Great Dane, and then followed Dominique as she set off down the path that Hagrid had instructed them to take. ‘Do you think he knows?' the boy asked anxiously as he caught up.

She looked at him blankly for a moment, the moonlight sending her hair the colour of mercury. ‘What? That you nicked your old man's cloak? Not a chance, that's just Hagrid being nostalgic. Besides, even if he did, I doubt he'd dob you in. Not like that whining little brother of yours. Are you _sure_ Albus hasn't written your folks a letter?'

‘Dead sure,' confirmed James calmly, his brown eyes scanning the trees. He took out his own wand and lit it too. ‘I bewitched his owl this morning so that it'll bring me any letters he sends.'

‘You didn't?' She looked appalled, but laughed merrily. ‘Merlin's cravat, James, I'm glad you're not _my _brother. You make Victoire and Louis look like _saints._'

He smirked, quite pleased with himself, and then, with another cautious glance around the trees, pulled out the Marauder's Map from his pocket.

Dominique looked at it in their wand-light. ‘I'm so glad we found that on Goyle before Professor Welsh joined the party yesterday. Somehow I don't get the impression that she'd be the type to just smile and hand it back to us. She'd probably give us another lecture about colonial imperialism or something, and then confiscate out of spite.' The girl grinned. She'd been cornered by the DADA teacher after dinner for having made a wise-crack about the necklace the professor was wearing - Welsh had found out that Dominique's mother was French, and had launched into a twenty-minute diatribe about Africa and the role of European wizards in the destruction of indigenous peoples and cultures. ‘As if the locals didn't use their wizards too,' added Dominique now, sourly.

James was barely listening. He was watching a dot on the map, the one representing Professor Welsh, as it wandered along in the corridors of the castle. ‘What is it with her and that anyway?' he asked absently.

Dominique glanced at him in surprise. ‘Well, she's obviously at least part Māori, James. You know they were one of those groups with a disproportionately large percentage of wizards compared to Muggles, and the whole Statue of Secrecy thing got pretty sketchy in some of those more far-flung parts of the globe. Welsh probably feels that the Muggle colonists oppressed them. Or the European wizards or something, what would I know? Still, I'm not sure she doesn't have roots here in Britain too.'

‘Eh? What makes you say that?' For the first time, James looked genuinely interested in what his friend was saying; he folded the map back up, put it away in his pocket, scanned the tree line again, and then looked at Dominique intently.

She shrugged. ‘I don't know. It's just, I heard her talking to Binns. Something about London, as though she had family there. Maybe her parents immigrated to New Zealand when she was young. She's the right age for it - lots did move out of Britain during Voldemort's Years of Terror in the seventies, the early eighties.'

James' lips twitched in amusement. ‘You just said she's Māori, and now she's an English emigrant? Make up your mind, Meeks.'  
Dominique frowned. ‘I know. It makes no sense. There's something abou-'

The cousins jumped as a burst of foul language hurtled out of the dark trees towards them. James had already pointed his wand like a weapon when Dominique burst into laughter, raising her own wand to better light a weirdly-gnarled hollow tree. ‘Dunno about you, James, but I'm guessing that's Hagrid's tree.'

The swearing tree really was a most inspiring thing; deeply impressive. Some of the words were quite imaginative (_you bowlegged bowtruckle's blistered buttocks_), some very old-fashioned (_odds bodkins)_ and the vast majority of them the type of thing that would have made Grandma Weasley hit it with a silencing curse if she'd been in range. Of course, James and Dominique were heartily glad that Grandma Weasley was tucked up safely in the Burrow in Devon, and the pair of them set about with great amusement to learning as many news words as they could - after all, wasn't it always wise to extend your vocabulary when the opportunity arose?

Still, eventually the novelty started to wear off. For a while they stood there debating - to the soundtrack of the tree's swearing - whether it was a naturally occurring phenomenon or whether someone must have cursed it at some stage. Even that grew stale, though, and then the fact that they were standing in the depths of the Forbidden Forest, in the dark, with the air turning cold, suddenly kicked in. That, and the fact that Hagrid hadn't appeared.

‘Where is Hagrid, anyway? He said he'd meet us here.'

‘I suppose he just got side-tracked,' said Dominique hopefully.

James was a little more pessimistic. ‘You know, Meeks... he said he had business to attend to. Given what we know about Hagrid, don't you think that has an worrisome ring to it?'

‘Well...'

As though to answer any doubts she might have had, the background murmur of bad language was broken by a large bang and a brilliant flash of red from the path Hagrid was supposed to arrive on. Without pausing to think, they both hissed _‘Nox' _at their wands and, holding them on the offence, started running through the dark down the path. There was another bang and shouting, now, but it wasn't Hagrid's voice at all - it was a completely different one. The cousins burst into a small clearing and found Hagrid waving his hands quite madly at four cloaked wizards who seemed to be trying to Stun him. The absurd thought, _how on earth could you miss Stunning something as big as Hagrid? _flashed through James's mind and then he himself Stunned two of the men and Dominique slapped a full-body bind on a third.  
‘Stop!' yelled the forth, and flung back his hood.

‘UNCLE CHARLIE!' yelled both teenagers in the same breath, and dropped their arms dumbfounded to their sides.

Charlie shook his head crossly at Hagrid, ‘You see? I _told_ you not to go shouting around like an idiot! What are this pair doing here anyway?' As the middle-aged, red-haired man spoke he raised his wand and fired off a few more Stuns, and Hagrid started bellowing again, but now Dominique and James could see that their Uncle and his friends hadn't been firing at Hagrid at all... but at a very large and very angry looking beast behind him.

‘Oh my-!' shouted James, ‘Is that a dragon?'

‘Not exactly,' answered Uncle Charlie grimly, and there was an earth-shaking thud as his spell finally hit the creature between the eyes and it tumbled like the collapse of a small barn.


	6. Experimental Breeding

Charlie sat in Hagrid’s hut, a cup of scalding black tea cradled in his hands and an unusually unforgiving look on his face. Even despite the circumstances, James and Dominique couldn’t help but be delighted at seeing him; he was, after all, their favourite uncle. Even if he _was _looking at them just as grimly as he was looking at Hagrid.

‘You know,’ Charlie was saying, ‘there’s reason Scamander got the ban on Experimental Breeding passed over half a century ago, Hagrid. I’m not going to say I’m a fan of all his laws – I was never so fond of the Werewolf Registration Act, for a start, though I suppose Remus Lupin biased me a bit on that one – but with the experimental breeding ban Scamander definitely had his head on straight. What were you thinking? A dragon and a manticore? That’s not even supposed to be _possible_!’

James blinked rapidly from the other side of the table. He’d _known _Hagrid had looked a bit funny when they’d mentioned manticores…  
‘Weren’t me,’ spluttered Hagrid, who looked on the verge of bubbling into the oversized hanky he kept scrunching up into a ball in one of his hands. ‘I just bought ’im, you know, an’ ’e looked so cute too.’

Charlie passed a hand across his face; the skin which during the years of his career with dragons had become flecked with shiny patches where burns had flamed now gleamed oddly in the firelight. ‘Why am I getting a distinct feeling of _de ja vu_ Hagrid? We’ve done this before, you know. You with the illegal animal, me to come and pick it up. It was bad enough when I thought it _was_ a dragon, but a half breed? I―’ He paused, and sighed at the distraught look on the big man’s face. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that,’ he added comfortingly, as though he felt bad at having gotten cranky, ‘I’m sure it’ll be okay. My friends’ll put it somewhere safe.’

‘You’re not going with them, Uncle Charlie?’ piped up Dominique with a delighted look on her face.

‘I would imagine not,’ replied a cool voice and all four inhabitants of the hut jumped slightly – Hagrid sent a teacup flying and spilt hot brown liquid into James’s lap, who leapt up with a yelp of pain while everyone else turned to stare at the woman who was standing in the doorway, watching them.

‘What’re _you_ doing here?’ blustered Hagrid uncomfortably, obviously stumped that he hadn’t realised she’d come in, and wondering how much of their conversation she’d heard. ‘And what’d you do to Boney?’

James and Dominique hadn’t noticed Great Dane, but they realised suddenly that by rights the dog should have barked at the intruder; instead it sat with a softly thumping tail and gazed up at Professor Welsh with a drooling look of apparently loving transfixion. The teacher glanced at it neutrally and commented smoothly, ‘I have a way with animals.’ Her gaze fell on Charlie, who seemed to be choking on the rock cake he’d started to eat before her appearance, and she added, ‘As, I’ve heard, do you.’

He nodded, and swallowed, eyes watering.

‘Why would you imagine he’ll stay?’ demanded Dominique, perhaps overly secure in the presence of both her Uncle and Hagrid.  
Welsh arched her dark eyebrows and looked at Charlie again. ‘You _are _Professor Weasley, are you not?’ she demanded. ‘The Headmistress implied that the new Care of Magical Creatures teacher would be arriving tonight.’

‘Yes, certainly,’ he agreed, thrusting out a scarred, muscly arm, and the hand at the furthest end of it. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Charlie Weasley at your service, have to admit Professor Weasley sounds a bit odd but there you go, sure my mother will cry with joy when she hears it the first time, and you are…?’

The witch almost smiled, or at least, for a split second the edge of her lips twitched. ‘Professor Welsh.’

Charlie, who was to Dominique’s critical eyes more than a bit taken by the handsome woman, seemed momentarily stumped by the fact that she hadn’t exchanged her first name with him. He looked a little disappointed, but nodded. ‘Ah, right.’

But he couldn’t say anything else because it finally seemed to have sunken into James’s brain – Merlin, he could be slow sometimes – because he turned and shouted, ‘Are you SERIOUS? Blimey, Uncle Charlie, why didn’t you tell us? I – damn, I’m glad I picked Care Of Magical Creatures this year, I almost didn’t, you know!’

Dominique looked likewise both irritated and delighted.

Their uncle grinned at them. ‘I didn’t know! Minerva only asked me a week ago, when Professor Mainwaring got Dragon Pox and decided she’d retire.’

‘But… won’t you miss Romania? And the dragons?’ asked James.

Charlie grinned. ‘We’ll have to see. This is a real honour, you know, but I’ve only promised Minerva one academic year, you know. I’ll tell you how I feel at the end of it.’ He paused as they all remembered Welsh standing there with a strange expression upon her face.

‘You’re the uncle of _both_ of them?’ she inquired calmly.

Charlie nodded. He was forty-eight years old but time hadn’t altered his shock of red hair, much longer than his mother approved of even now, and it danced all over the place as he moved his head. ‘I’m probably uncle to half of Gryffindor House, and a few Ravenclaws,’ he conceded with a laugh. ‘Let me see… all the Potters, all the Weasleys, there’s a connection to the Macmillians that I’ve never quite put my finger on… and the Malfoy family, of course, they’re in there somewhere, through the Blacks, you know.’

‘I see,’ she said, her accent particularly thick with her displeasure, and James had a sudden certainty that she did see, but that what she saw wasn’t the same thing as what the rest of them saw.

She turned back to Hagrid. ‘And may I enquire as to why James… Mr Potter,’ (had one of the other teachers commented on her use of their first names?), ‘who I was under the distinct impression Professor Longbottom had given to you as a matter of detention, is sitting here sipping tea? As for the presence of Miss Weasley?’

Hagrid looked shamefaced. ‘Oh, ah, we were doin’ detention, Professor, when Charlie here arrived and we were always close, Charlie an’ me, and so we – um…’

Charlie glanced from his niece and nephew to the Defence Against Dark Arts teacher, a small furrow on his scarred forehead. ‘My fault, I’m afraid. Long story, rather complicated.’

Glancing at him she gave that half odd smile, and then said in a doubly cool voice, as though to cover it up, ‘Well, Professor Weasley, I’m sure I’ll be delighted to hear it in the light of day tomorrow. As it is, I think these two ought to be in their dormitory.’ She glanced at a small timepiece she’d withdrawn from her robes pointedly. ‘And I think in the meantime I’ll be discussing the matter with their Head of House. This was not at all what I had in mind with Ja – Mr Potter’s detention.’ She swept out of the hut, then paused and added over her shoulder as an after thought, ‘Oh, and Miss Weasley? Twenty points from Gryffindor from being out of the castle at this time of night without due course.’

She vanished into the night, and James swore.

Dominique, however, was watching Uncle Charlie. He had a slightly bewitched look on his face, not unlike the one the dog had had.  
‘What a specimen that one is,’ Charlie murmured to Hagrid appreciatively.

‘If you like ‘em wild,’ muttered the Keeper of Gates and Keys.

Charlie grinned. ‘Oh, you know me, Hagrid, you know me…’

‘Reminds me of someone, actually,’ considered Hagrid thoughtfully.

And it was with a feeling of distinct discomfort that Dominique followed James back into the castle and up to the Gryffindor Tower. At the point where the stairs divided between boys’ and girls’, she said suddenly, ‘You’re right. There’s something dodgy about that witch. The way she looks at us…’

He grinned. ‘_Finally_ you agree. Makes me think of Dad’s stories, you know, teachers gone bad and all that.’

‘I don’t know about that, but… there is _something_.’

‘Shall we find out what?’

She nodded firmly. ‘You bet. I’ll be on it first thing tomorrow. G’night, James.’

‘G’night, Meeks.’

And they parted ways and went to bed, both followed by an image in their minds of secretive grey eyes set into the brown face of their Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher…  



	7. Ancient Words

The next day Rose sat in a corner of the library and pretended to work. To be honest, though, she wasn't all that used to merely _pretending _to work, and the pretence itself was kind of hard to keep up when Albus and Scorpius kept giving her those furtive little looks from where they worked at shelving books. She wished fervently that they would cease and desist, because she was starting to think that it must be as obvious to everyone else as it was to her that they were planning something. Frankly Rose kept expecting Madam Pince to swoop down on the lot of them and demand to know exactly which breed of No Good they were up to. But the librarian didn’t come even remotely close to swooping, and nobody else seemed to be inclined to either, and all the while Rose tried not to watch as Albus and Scorpius drew closer and closer to the Restricted Section with the rickety old trolley of books they had to put away. It irritated her to know that she was probably glancing at them quite as often as they were glancing at her (although she prided herself on a better understanding of discretion), but it was only because she knew what she was looking for that she happened to see it: a slight gleam of blue-mauve as a shape slipped from a shelf to hide beneath Malfoy’s robes. Scorpius kept on shelving books unperturbed for a few minutes and then, as though he simply couldn't help himself, he shot a self-satisfied grin in Rose's direction.

Her heart pounded. She kept repeating to herself that it wasn't _really _a bad thing she'd asked them to do for her; that it wasn't as though she’d requested a book on the Dark Arts, but try as she could she couldn’t avoid the sound of her mother’s voice titching disapprovingly inside her head. Nor was it any use reminding that voice that Mrs Hermione Weasley had broken a thousand rules when _she _was young… after all, inner voices of one's mother aren't always that logical.

Either way it was impossible to even _pretend_ to work any more and so she just sat there screwing up a piece of parchment and straightening it out again until Madam Pince finally did come over the ask her if she were quite alright.

‘Of course, thank you,’ Rose had lied with the shadow of a nervous smile and the librarian had nodded her head in a not-at-all-convinced kind of way and bustled off again.

The boys finally got their freedom when the clocks moved around to dinner time, and Rose had been all for skipping the food and just grabbing Scorpius, and the precious text he was carrying hidden, but he’d grabbed her elbow as they left the library and whispered, ‘Keep your hair on, Weasley. I’ll meet you after dinner at the steps leading to the Astronomy Tower, alright?’

‘If you damage it, I’ll _kill _you,’ she'd hissed before moving with her cousin to the Gryffindor table and picking at her food.

Albus, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have even registered his best friend’s sleight of hand and sat spooning thick hot soup into his gob in hungry oblivion. Fidgetting as always, Rose watched with growing irritation as he rolled a small black stone back and forth beside his bowl, until the movement threatened to tip her over the edge and she snapped, ‘Would you _stop _that?’

He shoved it back into his pocket. ‘It’s not my fault I’m in a good mood,’ he said with shiny eyes and a mouthful of soup. ‘D’you know we have our first Care of Magical Creatures class with Charlie tomorrow? I still can’t believe he’s a professor!’ And he gave a little wave towards the teachers' table. Charlie waved his goblet back at him happily enough, then continued talking to Professor Sprout, who was seated beside him.

‘Ohh,’ said Rose, mind finally distracted from the ancient text stashed beneath Scorpius Malfoy’s robes. ‘Dominique won’t like that.’

‘Eh?’ Albus' soup splashed.

Rose pointed up at the teachers' table. The Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher had finished her meal, risen gracefully to her feet and moved over to where Charlie sat, resting a slender brown hand on his shoulder as he gazed up at her. Now she was saying something that made his face split into a grin.

Sure enough, when Rose and Albus glanced down their own table, they found Dominique and James staring up at the two teachers with hard dislike in their eyes.

Albus blinked. ‘What’s gotten into them, then? I know James doesn’t like Welsh, but that’s cause he got caught. He’s always cranky when he gets caught.’

Rose rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you ever listen to anything going on around you, Al? They haven’t shut up about it, they’ve got all these illogical conspiracy theories about Professor Welsh, including that she’s bewitched Uncle Charlie. I think that’s a load of hogwash personally. Sure, she isn’t all that nice to us, but mostly teachers aren’t, and I don’t see as how it follows that that means they’re unpleasant to each other, in their own company. And just because Meeks and James don’t like her, it doesn’t alter the fact that she’s quite attractive in an odd kind of way.’

Albus was still looking at Dominique and James. He blinked at the look of dislike on his Veela cousin’s face. ‘But what’s Meeks so uptight about?’

Rose grinned. ‘Well, the bewitching theory is hers, of course. And besides, don’t you know? She’s got detention too now. Apparently she was caught creeping around Welsh’s corridor this morning – and it’s not with Hagrid anymore, it’s with Welsh herself. I wonder what she’ll make them do.’

But at that point Rose saw Scorpius stand up and her cousins' conspiracy theories flew right back out of her mind. Leaving the rest of her soup in the bowl, she left the Great Hall rapidly, with a slightly baffled Albus hurrying after her.

'What's got into you this evening, Rosie...?'

*

The corridor with the staircase up to the Astronomy Tower was quite bare but it made Albus nervous. ‘We’re gunna get in trouble if a teacher sees us here, you know. Looks like we’re up to something.’

Malfoy grinned, his eyes gleaming in the candles that lit the corridor. ‘Well, we are, aren’t we?’

‘I wish we had Dad’s Cloak… maybe I can nick it off James…’ muttered Albus, more to himself than anything else.

The other two were ignoring him either way. Scorpius pulled out the text and passed it to Rose gingerly. She took it in her hands and her eyes opened wide. ‘Ohh, so _that’s_ why it’s glowing - I saw, in the library, you know, that it was sort of bluish - it's got a protective charm on it. To stop it being damaged. To stop it deteriorating over the years.’ She was relieved and slid it straight into her bag. ‘Thanks Scorpius, I owe you.’

The blond boy beamed all over his pointed face and the trio started down the hall towards the Gryffindor Tower. They’d reached the Gryffindor hall when Rose said abruptly, ‘Do you want to go to the library? It’s a bit late to be outside, but at least we can all sit in the library. I mean, the three of us. Um.’

Albus looked surprised. It was the first time to his memory that his cousin had actually voluntarily offered to spend time with him and his best friend. He protested, ‘Do you really think that’s wise? Given what you’ve got in your bag?’

She paused. ‘No. I guess not. Well, goodnight then, Scorpius.’ And she stepped through the portrait door, which a flustered-looking Sixth Year had held open for her, though only after pushing past quite rudely in the first place.

Without thinking, Scorpius punched Albus in the arm the moment she’d vanished.

‘Oww! What was that for?’ Al demanded but Malfoy seemed incapable of explaining because he just frowned and shrugged his head in a kind of frustrated way and then uttered goodnight and stalked off down to the dungeons and his own House’s rooms.

Albus rubbed his arm, muttered ‘Orange marmalade’ at the Fat Lady, and went to see if there were any of the bonbons his mum had sent him left.

  
*

Rose put herself to bed. Or at least, she brushed her teeth and braided back her slightly bushing, slightly red hair, and put on her pyjamas, and pulled the heavy curtains on her four poster bed closed. But she didn't go to sleep. Instead she sat crosslegged in the middle of the doona spread, her wand propped up against her knee illuminating the scene, the illicit text placed carefully in front of her, and two dictionaries, one grammar book, an old bible, and three reference guides (all Muggle-authored – one Jewish, one Catholic, and one Seven Day Adventist) spread out around her in a chaos of books. There was also a pretty notepad of Muggle paper that her Grandma Granger had given her for Christmas, and a quill, with which she was scratching out enthusiastic and surprisingly illegible notes. The bottle of ink was suspended in mid air above her left knee to avoid accidents.

_Saul, _she wrote, _once powerful king of the Israelites (they begged for a king, didn't then?) was forsaken by Yhwh and the ordinary oracles failed him - what were the "ordinary oracles" - right, dreams, prophets, the urim (look up). Saul had already sent all the witches and wizards from the land, when he took reign (when, date??) so now he sent all his men off to find him one. They do find one, a witch, at a place called Endor, a woman who possessed a talisman which invokes the dead…_

Rose’s thoughts flew as she scrawled and read and thumbed dictionaries and read a bit more. It was fascinating to be reading, clear as day, in the Muggle version of the Bible, about the existence of witches and wizards. It was fascinating to see that even then, all that time ago, a Muggle king had driven them from his land; but then that he'd ironically needed the help of one. She already had begun to suspect that Samuel was a wizard. She'd already read other texts about the Samuel; certainly he'd been a prophet and that job requires a kind of open mind that Muggles can’t always muster up. All in all, it was marvellous stuff, in fact, there was only one small problem: the witch’s talisman to summon the dead. To Rose’s knowledge, there only one of them that had ever been made, and it had been made by the Peverells, if the stories she’d heard told after dinner by her mother and her father and Uncle Harry and Auntie Ginny were true. And so how could the Witch of Endor have been able to use the Resurrection Stone if it hadn’t been invented yet?


	8. Suspicions

‘Well, _I _think she’s meddling with the Dark Arts,’ muttered James dourly as he and Dominique slunk around the halls beneath his father’s Invisibility Cloak, their eyes fixed on the dot marked _A. Welsh_.

‘Never mind about that,’ hissed Dominique, and jabbed a finger at the map. ‘Look, she’s with Charlie again… they only met yesterday!’  
The day was coming to a close, some hours having passed since they’d seen the new teacher talk at the table with their uncle, and the Dominique didn’t like how things were progressing. James’s dislike of Professor Welsh was rubbing off onto the part-Veela, and her belief that her favourite uncle was being hoodwinked was nigh unbearable.

The invisible two crept around the corner, seeking to make their footsteps as inaudible as they could. They reached the end of the hall and leant out over the railings to peer down onto the stairway beneath them.

Uncle Charlie was relaxing back against the lower railings with an easy grin upon his face, his arms reaching out on either side of him along the marble in a way that made him look both very bold and oddly vulnerable. Professor Welsh, on the other hand, was standing in front of him, her face screwed up unpleasantly and her arms folded tightly across her breasts in a defensive way. ‘It’s not that easy,’ she was hissing, ‘I don’t even know where to start looking. That’s the only reason I came here, you know. You think I _like _this miserable place?’

Charlie’s grin broadened. ‘Oh, Hogwarts isn’t so bad. It grows on you.’

A small smile flitted across Welsh’s face; Dominique felt James beside her sand up straight in astonishment at the pleasant way it altered the Professor’s profile. Dominique elbowed him, hard.

Welsh spoke from behind her smile. ‘Oh, not Hogwarts personally, so much.’ She glanced around. ‘I’ll admit it has a certain... charm. Just the rest of it… the weather.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s just not home. On the other hand―’ she looked up and met Charlie’s eyes intently. ‘On the other hand, I keep feeling that the answer is here somewhere. The answer to it all. The solution.’

Charlie grew serious. ‘Does Minerva know why you’re here?’

‘Of course not.’ Welsh brushed a hand across her face. ‘Do you think she’d let me teach – that the school board would let me teach – if she knew?’

‘I don’t think you know Minerva McGonagall like I do.’ He reached out gingerly and touched her arm. ‘But look on the bright side, Remy, at least you’ve got me on the case now as well. Between the two of us I’m sure we’ll get around the obstacles.’

The professor half-smiled again as they headed off down the stairs.

Dominique barely let them get out of earshot before she growled, ‘That. Is. Out. Rageous!’

James shrugged. ‘Seemed innocent enough to me.’

‘Innocent, innocent , I – James Potter, let me tell you that I know a bewitching when I see it. Did you notice how he was looking at her? That’s not natural! And even you, you, ogling just because she crackled a smile!’ The girl pummelled his arm and James let out a yelp, which she ignored. ‘I’m one-eighth Veela, James, remember? I _know _what I’m talking about! She has some secret, something that’s brought her to Hogwarts, you were right. We both heard her, _the answer is here somewhere_. She doesn’t even like it here! She’s up to something and she’s already got Uncle Charlie wrapped around her little finger because he might be useful.’ Dominique paused to gather breath and then continued, ‘And she lied about her name!’

James blinked. ‘Eh?’

‘Remy – he called her Remy. And yet the map—’ She snatched it out of his hand and spread it in a blur of motion. ‘The map keeps calling her A. Welsh.’ Dominique jabbed at the quickly moving dot (accompanied by C. Weasley) viciously. ‘Whatever her name is, it sure as Ashwinder egg’s isn’t Remy, unless someone’s changed the spelling rules when I wasn’t looking and whacked an A on the front.’

‘Could be a nickname?’ he suggested.

Dominique rolled her eyes. ‘Does she _look _to you like the nickname type?’

He grinned. ‘Good point. Erm… so what do we do now?’

‘Well, we follow them.’

He groaned slightly. ‘Look, Meeks, I know I started this but tomorrow I’ve got Quidditch practise at the crack of dawn and…’

She glared and he took the map off her, studied it intently, and concede, ‘Oh, al_right_ then. Come on. Uncle Charlie’s headed off to his room. Welsh seems to be going to the DADA classroom… I guess her office is there. We’ll get there quicker this way.’

It was quite late and the students were all supposed to be in their beds, or, at the very least, in their dorms. James and Dominique moved down quietly shifting stairways and along corridors and reached the classroom a minute or two before Professor Welsh did. It’s strange how a minute or two feels like an eternity in those kind of circumstances. Dominique could feel her feet cramping, and James kept breathing her blonde hair in, making his nose twitch, until in the end he reached out and brushed it around onto the other side of her neck. She gave him an odd look beneath the secrecy of the Cloak and at that point the professor arrived.

Welsh had her wand stretched out in front of her as she walked, a sort of silver glow lighting the walls, and at first they couldn’t understand what they were seeing, and it was only as her figure grew closer that they realised it was a Patronus. At first they couldn’t see what kind of Patronus it was, either, because of the brightness of its own light in that narrow space, but as it turned side on they realised it was a slender, strange-looking dog, not unlike a greyhound – a breed James had always found repulsive. The dog vanished through the door which the teacher swung open and let close of its own weight, which the pair of Sixth Years took as an opportunity to step inside behind her.

In the dark, the DADA classroom had an eerie look to it. The moa bones gleamed dull in the half light, creaking and groaning above them with a swaying motion, even though there was no wind. The tattooed death masks on the walls muttered at each other in a language which was at times musical and at times guttural, and which neither Dominique nor James understood. The grown witch turned to the masks and crooned something back in the same tongue, and the masks fell silent with a whispered sigh. The glass in the bookshelves glinted and reflected the passage of the professor as she passed between the desks, and all around her wandlight and Patronus seemed to illuminate objects that the two students had somehow failed to noticed in daylight, but which now caught their eyes rather ominously: a yellowed skull with a gaping hole where it’s lower mandible should have been; the frail remains of a paper-wasp’s nest, _Polistes variabilis_; a circle of sallow cowrie shells; a mummified cat; a small obsidian dog with a cartouche on its stomach; and a pair of dried out puffer fish hanging suspended in space and gazing at them with glassy eyes. The only sound was Welsh’s slow footsteps and their own breathing beneath the cloak – it was undeniably creepier than the Forbidden Forest, a fact that Dominique admitted without words when, as James pushed his hand towards her in the semi-dark, she didn’t threaten him with violence but instead grasped his fingers and squeezed tightly.

Both of them were starting to regret having made the choice to trail the professor. But the door behind them had closed with a click and wouldn’t Welsh notice if they opened it to leave? So they followed her inorexibly, like snails drawn to a saucer of beer, as she moved up the stairs, the silver greyhound still leading the way. But as Welsh opened the door to her private office the Patronus vanished and a feeling of sudden desolation hit James and Dominique; they hadn’t realised how comforting its presence had been. Patronus’s they trusted; they’d grown up with them, they knew that the creator must be thinking happy thoughts to create one, and it had rendered Welsh slightly less frightening. But when she entered the office, and the Patronus, that last shred of familiarity, was ripped away, it all became a little too much. Welsh cast the _Muffliato _spell, and Dominique and James hovered, invisible, in the doorway and watched as their professor stood in the centre of a room which was bare – _absolutely bare_ – fell to her knees – and started to scream.


	9. Karakia

The scream split through the empty room and James cried out, but Professor Welsh didn’t notice, so involved she was in her own pain. Dominique was almost breaking the bones in James’s fingers with her grip. And then, suddenly and yet slowly all at the same time, the teacher's pain started to breathe against them and, to their horror, they realised that her scream had turned into a song – a song like neither of them had ever heard before. The chant rose up and swallowed the air around them making it hard to breathe but they couldn’t move; they seemed stuck to the spot as surely as if someone had cast a full-body-bind on them. The wail had a black, dark rhythm to it that wrapped around them, curled at their throats, cast fingers through their hair. In and out and up and around that voice moved, until suddenly, when Dominique thought her lungs were going to explode, it changed abruptly into words, and both she and James seized jagged breaths. The words however were little better than the screaming wail had been, for they came in that unknown tongue that the witch had used upon the death masks. And with the words she pulled out a small dull knife, placing it on the floor before her with the point to the door, and as she sung she swayed backwards and forwards on her knees, her eyes shut, like an undulating snake, and unbuttoned her outer robes until they slid down around her, revealing a plain black shift beneath, and brown arms, covered from shoulders to elbows with greenish black tattoos like those on the masks. Worse were the cuts and scars that lined the skin from her elbows to her wrists, some seeping, some festered and sickly yellowed, some healed clean. Around her neck hung a thick black cord from which dangled an ugly greenstone amulet.As her voice grew louder and she raised the knife, Dominique finally took control of the nerves reaching to her feet, and moved. She couldn’t stand there and watch that – that – whatever that was that was happening. And James seemed to agree because he made no move to stop her, but together they walked like mutes back through the classroom, which was silent now that they had passed out of the teacher’s _Muffliato_, and it was hard to believe that that noise was continuing, and maybe it wasn’t, maybe she’d stopped, maybe she’d plunged that dagger between her tattooed breasts, and James half wanted to go back, but Dominique’s grasp on his hand wouldn’t allow it and she pulled them out through the door and closed it silently and then pulled him down the corridor in any old direction, just away, away, away from whatever that had been, pulled him along until they had somehow reached the Gryffindor common room and then she ripped the Cloak from her and dropped, ashen faced and shaking, to the rug in front of the fire.

Its small flames didn’t seem so futile now, but welcome.

It was late. They were alone and the fireplace was almost burnt out. James folded the Cloak into his pocket and then knelt by her side, poking at the coals till they glowed bright orange and then dumping some logs on, prodding them a bit more until they burst into a rolling sheet of sudden flames. Then he reached out his hand to her, but she pulled back shuddering and snarled, ‘Don’t touch me – not – not yet. Please, Jamie…’

To be honest, James was more unnerved by Dominique’s reaction than he had been by Professor Welsh; his cousin was tough and hardy, she was one of the blokes, she was as mad crazy as her Dad and had plans of becoming a treasure hunter like him, or a curse breaker, or both, and now here she was on the edge of tears and for the first time in a long time he remembered that she was a girl and that remembering thoroughly stumped him.

After a few minutes, she rubbed her balled up fists against her face and said in a hard voice – the sound of which reassured him no end – ‘I don’t know what that was, but I didn’t like it.’

James paused and actually thought before answering. ‘I didn’t like it either, but I’m not entirely sure it was the Dark Arts.’

Dominique stared at him as if he’d just sprouted a second head. ‘Are you _kidding _me? Screaming and howling and cutting herself?’  
He paused again. ‘Well, I was read a book once, for Muggle Studies and – it might be religious.’

‘What?’ she asked with unexpected coolness; he could feel her distancing herself from him despite the fact that she hadn’t physically moved.

‘I’m not saying a nice religion, but, well, a supplication to ancestors kind of thing.’

‘Nobody seriously worships ancestors, James.’

‘Mal’s mother does,’ came a small voice and the Sixth Years jumped, clutching for wands and, for the second time, found themselves pointing them dangerously at James’s little brother.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ Albus cried out, ‘I just came to see if there was any food lying around, I was hungry, okay? I couldn’t sleep, and I wasn’t listening to your conversation, I only heard that last bit, honest!’

Dominique glowered furiously, though James had a sneaking suspicion that it was more from having been caught looking scared than from anything else, and so before she could tear up his little brother verbally or otherwise, since the kid looked genuinely worried for once instead of just whiny, James asked quickly, ‘Why would Scorpius’s mother worship her ancestors, Al?’

The fifteen-year-old made a helpless motion with hands. ‘I don’t know. It’s cause she’s Asian, isn’t it, I suppose. He doesn’t talk about her much, you know that, she just kind of _is_, she never actually _does_. You’d think he were embarrassed about her or something, I don’t know. You remember the few times we’ve seen her and his Dad – I’ve never heard her open her mouth, not once.’

James frowned. ‘You’re right. She hasn’t.’ Then he shrugged. ‘Whatever, pipsqueak, get back to bed.’

Albus started hurrying up the stairs, then paused and said suddenly, ‘Haven’t you got Quidditch practice at six a.m. tomorrow? You know that’s only—’ he glanced at his watch ‘—four hours away?’

James swore, yawned, and stood up. ‘I have to go to bed, Meeks, we’ll talk about it tomorrow, eh? Trust me, I’m as bothered by it all as you are.’ And he ran his hand lightly across her hair and followed his brother up the stairs to the boys’ dorm.

Dominique watched them go with an unusually closed expression on her pretty face. _No you’re not, James Potter_, she thought as she watched him vanish out of sight. _Not even remotely as bothered as I am. And there’s something distinctly wrong in Hogwarts right now. If it isn’t Professor I-lie-about-my-name-Welsh, then I don’t know what it is. And she’s got our uncle in the balance and you don’t understand how serious that is because you seem incapable of seeing how dangerous girls can be when they put their mind to it. And you get all outraged about things in the heat of the moment but that outrage wears off as you start thnking about dinner and Quidditch and what snack your Mum's going to send you next week. But I’m not like that. I don’t forget. And I know that something is terribly, terribly wrong. Something bad’s going to happen. _

She didn’t like her thoughts. She didn’t like the fact she was even thinking them. Most of all, she didn’t like the way it reminded her of the prophecy she’d made last year. Dominique didn’t believe in prophecy. She didn’t believe in Divination. She didn’t swallow all that kind of miscellaneous crap. Not even when she was the one from whom it stemmed.

With a sigh and a heave of her hair, Dominique poked at the fire violently, sending sparks every which way, then stood up and headed to bed. Rose, who was just piling the last of her books into her special bag, heard her pass down the corridor, and wondered what she’d been up to, but not for very long, because her head was too full with the problem of the Prophet Samuel, the Witch of Endor, and the mysterious Resurrection Stone…


	10. Quidditch Practice

The next morning Albus Potter climbed out of bed at exactly half past six to watch his brother's Quidditch practice. Albus didn’t normally bother with going to the morning practise (whereas he regularly attended the weekend ones, which were in the evenings and thus more amenable to a fifteen-year-old boy who’d rather sleep), but that morning he’d woken in unusually high spirits, despite his fitful night. The Good Mood wasn't entirely unfounded either, since he knew that after breakfast his first class was a double dose of Care of Magical Creatures and therefore his head, it goes without saying, was full of nothing but good thoughts about what his Uncle Charlie was going to dish up for them. Maybe even a dragon, though Albus knew that was a wee bit implausible but, well, a bloke could hope couldn’t he?  
Albus pulled his cloak on over his school robes because it was turning cold early this year and, besides, it kept raining unexpectedly. He hurried down to the common room and ran into Rose at the bottom of the stairs, where she was pulling her own cloak around her in front of the fire.

‘Thought I’d watch today,’ he said cheerfully, to forestall any idea that she might have had of restraining him, but to his surprise she simply picked up her bag, tucked it into the depths of her cloak, flipped her hair out from beneath the hood, and said calmly, ‘I'll walk with you then.’

He looked at her suspiciously but she just gazed right back at him from Weasley-blue eyes, very innocently (too innocently, he thought darkly) and couldn’t think of anything to say in response to that suggesting except to mutter, ‘You need more sleep. You’ve got bags beneath your eyes.’

She shrugged. ‘So do you.’ Then she pointed her wand at her face and, after some murmured words, the tiredness seemed to lessen.

‘You can do that?’ he demanded.

Rose rolled her eyes. 'Well, _obviously_, seeing as I just did. Auntie Angelina taught me the spell. I can do yours too, if you want.'

A certainly mischievous gleam had taken residence in his cousin's eyes, and Albus declined hastily. Grinning, Rose grabbed the rest of her stuff, and they headed outside.

Scorpius, too, was tired when he met them, carrying a piece of toast on his way towards the Quidditch pitch. Like Albus, he enjoyed watching the team train a bit, though of course the Gryffindor team wasn’t as keen on his company. Whenever there was a new Gryffindor player they always got a little hysterical at the sight of a Slytherin watching them, since the logical leap tended towards paranoid belief that hew some kind of spy. In the end it was always James, who as Captain had that right, who had to tell them to shut up or he'd hit them on the head with a broomstick. James' indifference to the Slytherin watching them baffled his team but, after all, Malfoy _was _his kid brother's only real friend and, while the blond might vociferously support his House’s team during the matches (to Albus’s irritation), he’d never given James any reason to suspect he was giving tactics to his enemy.

Rose looked at the Slytherin now, as they walked towards the pitch, and said enviously, ‘Where’d you get the toast? I didn’t think breakfast was served yet.’

‘Isn’t,’ he said through a mouthful. ‘We just get better service in the Slytherin chambers. House-elves all over the place. Want a bite?’ He proffered her the piece of hot bread, dripping with butter and honey.

‘Not after you’ve had your fingers all over it,’ she replied archly, then watched as he shrugged and ate it in surprisingly few bites.

‘Hey,’ complained Albus. ‘_I’d_ have eaten it.’

Scorpius grinned. ‘Never asked you, did I?’

In companionable silence – after Al had stopped whining, anyway – the three Fifth Years headed out to the open plain where James stood impatiently with the rest of his team, just waiting now for the second Beater to turn up. As usual, the newest team members – a Beater and a Chaser, both Second Years, replacing those who had left last June – started to protest fiercely at the sight of a Slytherin appearing over the crest, but James, now firmly in Captain-mode, snapped at them to _shuddupalreadywouldyou_ and, beneath their worshipped Chaser’s firm gaze, they obeyed. The thing was, James was the only one who knew exactly how his brother and Malfoy had become friends in the first place, and that was why he trusted the boy. On the other hand, he also knew that he wasn’t _supposed _to know the ins-and-outs of the process and therefore, since the two boys never mentioned it, he didn’t feel he had the right to. As it was, James had only found out in the first place because he'd happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

The missing Beater appeared over crest with her broomstick clutched in one hand and her slightly square face a little pink from running, and James shouted, 'For the love of Merlin, Jones, why didn't you fly here?' The girl blushed even pinker. 'Right, you lot,' continued James, completely oblivious to the Beater already, 'this is a big year. How do we know this is a big year? Come on!'

The new Second Years looked rapt; the others not so much – they’d heard the speech before.

‘Because every year’s a great year, James,’ simpered Ophelia Wood, the Keeper. Out of all the other continuing team members, she was the only one watching James with bright eyes, but that had little to do with his speech – she always watched him like that.

James ran his hand through his hair, faltered slightly, then continued, ‘Yeah? ’Phelia’s right. And last year was a disaster. A _disaster_! I’m sorry, but I don’t care what the excuses were – yes, I wasn’t playing because of my mate Goyle, and yes, yes, yes, I know, but they still beat us! A humiliation! So it’s not happening again and – Rosie, are you actually planning on _joining_ us at some stage or are you just going to hang around over there with your boyfriends?’

The girl rolled her eyes and muttered, ‘Merlin, don't make me gag. And I can hear you perfectly well from over here.’ But she shed her cloak obediently and handed it to Albus. ‘Watch it,’ she instructed before adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘and don’t bother trying to look inside pockets or in my bag, mister, because it won’t let you.’ Then, shivering slightly in the cool autumn breeze moving across her uniform, she joined the rest of the team with a sour look on her face. Rose Weasley loathed early morning practise, at least when she’d been up all night studying, anyway.

It was just as Rose had reached Ophelia’s side that she saw the Defence Against The Dark Arts Professor.

‘What’s _she_ doing?’ Rose asked abruptly, and James, who had launched back into his familiar speech, broke off and stared where his cousin was pointing. Professor Welsh didn’t seem to notice all the attention she was drawing. Instead she just continued walking slowly around the edge of the Quidditch field, her eyes fixed on the ground in front of her, as though she were looking for something.

_Something lost_, James thought, _like an answer_.

_Something lost_, Rose thought, who had spent too much time in the Gryffindor Common Room not to have heard the paranoid conspiracy theories about the DADA professor, who now and realised abruptly that they were rubbing off on her. _Something lost._

The two cousins’ eyes met in supposed understanding, although of course they were thinking two entirely different things, but then James shook his dark hair, as though to refresh his brains, and launched back into his speech as though nothing had happened...

‘You were great,’ said Scorpius admiringly as a sweaty Rose came over and took her cloak and precious bag back from Albus. She wasn’t happy with how it had gone – she seemed to have lost her edge with her lack of sleep, or perhaps with the sight of Welsh stalking around the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Not that Malfoy seemed to have noticed. ‘I wish I played Seeker like you,’ he continued. ‘You know my Dad played Seeker.’

James, who was walking past, grinned at his brother’s friend and said smugly, ‘No offence, mate, but didn’t your Dad _buy _his way onto the team with a bunch of pretty broomsticks?’

Malfoy frowned and bit his lip with dislike as he watched James moving off towards the castle.

Rose smiled. ‘Ignore him. He’s just in a foul mood because your House beat us last year.’

‘Wasn’t your fault really,’ muttered Malfoy darkly. ‘It’s a bit hard to do well when you’ve got a Second Year filling in for your Captain because Goyle broke his bloody legs.’

Rose grinned. ‘Very good point. You know, I reckon James still owes him for that. I know they duelled, but still, I reckon Goyle needs _at least _a week in hospital himself.’ Then, to their complete astonishment, she added, ‘Let’s skip class after breakfast, there’s something I want to show you both. Well, two things, actually.'

The boys exchanged a glance, then Albus protested, ‘Couldn’t we skip some other class? Not to sound completely crazy but.. . we’ve got double Care Of Magical Creatures, remember?’

Scorpius nodded enthusiastically.

Despite herself, Rose grinned. ‘Oh, okay. But after that we’re scampering, okay? It’s important.’


	11. Care Of Magical Creatures

Forty students approached the outside clearing where the note, passed around at breakfast, had informed them that class would be held. They were all chattering at the top of their lungs, and understandably so. Because Professor Weasley had only arrived late on Wednesday night, the Fifth Year Gryffindor/Slytherins were the first to be taught by him. A lot of wild speculation had been tossed around about what he would teach them, even the Slytherins excited despite themselves, and of course the most common theme was dragons, but they didn’t _really _expect—

‘OH MY _GOD_!’ shouted a Muggle-born Gryffindor, who was the first to come around the greenhouses towards the clearing, and who subsequently came to such a halt that the students behind were forced to plough into her thickset back. She was of course none other than the Beater who’d arrived late for Quidditch practice that morning and she didn’t seem to be having a very good day of it so far, all things considered. Rose rather thought that the girl was going to keel over; certainly the big witch had gone pink again. ‘IT _IS _AN EFFIN’ DRAGON!’ she bellowed and of course everyone, who had stopped to stare at her rather than at what she was staring at, now raced past her with a thunder of footsteps.

Charlie Weasley stood in the middle of the clearing but he didn’t even look up at them as they appeared, just raised his bare hand in a sign for silence and they all fell still with wide, fascinated, and if truth be told, more-than-a-little awed eyes. He was dressed in worn trousers and a shirt with its sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, and was standing face to face with a dragon. It took the students a moment to realise that the dragon was chained. It was, but it didn’t seem to need to be, because it was resting quite calmly upon its haunches and following Charlie’s every move with teacup-sized golden eyes. The dragon handler didn’t break contact with those eyes once, his right hand stroking its scaly emerald snout, his left hand motioning the students closer to him and then, when they stood about a metre away from the length of the dragon’s chain, he motioned them to stop again. All this without him even looking at them once, and all this without the fifteen-year-olds making so much as a sound. A kind of magic had settled over the glade and they knew it. Not the magic of spells and wands and incantations, nor even the magic of potions, but the magic of a man who understands an animal as an equal or, even more accurately, the magic of an animal understanding a fellow animal, for what is man, in the end, but an animal? Even with his wands and his aeroplanes, an animal he remains, and perhaps not even the smartest one on the planet.

The students watched their new professor, utterly transfixed.

‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ Charlie asked in a quiet, modulated voice, hand stroking in time to his words, and his blue eyes blinking just once, very, very slowly. ‘Can any of you tell me her breed?’

There was a long silence, as though none of them knew, or perhaps just that none of them were game to speak in case they broke the spell and the magic faded and the fascinating creature became a beast and burnt them all into a puff of cremated bones. But then there was a small sound, and Scorpius Malfoy licked his lips and said, ‘She – she’s a Japanese Water Dragon.’

His voice was so low that he could barely be heard. Indeed, if it hadn’t been so silent in the glade he _wouldn’t _have been heard, but he was, and his classmates all shifted their gaze to him as though he had entered into the magic. Looking at him they all noticed, not for the first time, but certainly for the first time in a long time, the way that his eyes beneath his blonde hair, his eyes in his pale pointed face, were shaped than their own were, and he could see their thoughts in their faces as they remembered, _ah yes, isn’t Malfoy’s mother Asian? Japanese herself, isn’t she? Strange little woman? Very beautiful, but barely ever leaves her house. Yes, and it’s whispered… it’s whispered… __it’s whispered…_

Charlie's left hand twitched slightly and all thoughts about Malfoy’s mother vanished as Charlie and his dragon and the strength vibrating from both of them re-invaded the minds of the students like a sticky perfume.

‘Correct, Mr Malfoy. Five points to Slytherin. She is indeed a Japanese Water Dragon and is a particularly lovely specimen. You’re having a once in a lifetime experience here, ladies and gentlemen, because she’s only en route to Japan. Illegal black marketeers had taken her to Ireland and then lost control of her right in the middle of County Cork, all because they didn’t know how to talk her language. You can imagine the Memory Charms required…’

_Didn’t know how to talk her language._ The words rolled around their minds because they could see that Charlie clearly could. Although they couldn’t hear it they knew he was talking it even as he spoke to them, and they studied him, drank him in, as they tried to decipher the secret. Was it in the way he moved? Was it in the eye contact? Was he a Legilimens who read her brain? Could you even use Legilimency on an animal? Was it his hand on her snout?

‘I wanted to show her to you because there’s a very unfortunate perception in Britain of dragons as ugly, brutish things. Of course, the fact that the northern European breeds do tend to be thoroughly ugly, brutish things doesn’t really help…’ There was a smile in his voice now, and the dragon moved her tail along the ground. It was the first time they’d noticed her tail and it seemed, well, _feathery. _‘Not that all dragons in the rest of the world make good house pets. The Chinese Fireball has a nasty attitude, and don't even get me started on the Peruvian Vipertooth. But the Japanese Water Dragon…do you know anything else about them, Mr Malfoy?’

Scorpius cleared his throat again, ever so softly. ‘They’re – they’re very rare. But they’re considered good luck. And very wealthy wizards capture them and build them lux-luxurious gardens to dwell in, in the hope that they’ll increase their prosperity…’ He realised he was speaking to the rhythm of Charlie’s hand moving on the dragon, _just _like Charlie’s hand, but his confidence was growing and so he took it in his stride and continued, ‘But they usually don’t do well in captivity. So – so if they breed – if they breed then a wizard counts himself as truly blessed and – er, and if he has a child in the same year as the dragon, and the dragon gives birth on exactly the same day as the child is born, then the child is a talisman and worth more than all the wizard’s wealth put together.’

_Except that it doesn’t work,_ he added to himself bitterly, _except that it’s a load of superstitious claptrap, along with green tea put at the statues of the ancestors, along with the blessings of the New Year, along with the Zodiac, along with everything else his poor, beautiful, pathetic mother believed in. _But he didn’t say any of that, because he knew it would break the magic and, for a boy living in the wizarding world, there was pitifully little magic – _real _magic – in Scorpius Malfoy’s life.

‘Another five points to Slytherin, Mr Malfoy,’ said Charlie smoothly and then abruptly broke eye contact with the dragon, and they all gasped, loud in the glade, the sound of forty children all breathing in at once, all convinced that they were about to see the dragon snap out and rip the professor’s face off.

And she did snap out, but only to swallow a fly that had been annoying her, then reached up a hind leg and scratched herself behind the ear.

‘Anyone want to pet her?’ asked Charlie cheerfully. ‘If so, line up in an orderly file behind Mr Malfoy. And I mean orderly. Just because she’s friendly doesn’t mean she’s not a wild animal or an independent spirit. There’s to be no shoving, no pushing, not even any farting, if I don’t give you permission.’ A small giggle ran through the lined-up students. Charlie gave them a stern look. ‘I’m not having my first day as a teacher marred by some twit having his arm bitten off. And I assure you, it’s _you _I’ll hex, not the dragon.’ His blue-grey eyes passed along each and every one of them, then he rested them on Scorpius and smiled again. ‘So. Will you do the honours?’

Shaking in every bone of his body, the Slytherin walked on wobbly legs out into the glade, came to rest beside Charlie Weasley, who he realised suddenly wasn’t all the much taller than him, then reached out a hand – and stroked the cool, supple skin of a real live dragon.

Behind him, the class would have let out a roar of delight – except that they didn’t dare...


	12. Palmistry & Comfy Cushions

James Potter sprawled amongst the cushions in the Divination classroom, his head feeling slightly off-kilter from the incense. Yawning, in a not-so-discreet manner, he glanced at Ophelia Wood, who was scrutinising Kitwin Macmillian’s palms intently, and then looked back at Dominique, who was reading his own. Dominique had a faraway look on her face and James only just managed to bite back a groan. He loathed Divination. In his opinion it was the biggest load of Hypogriff dung known to the wizarding world, but Meeks was taking Transfiguraton because she enjoyed it and so here, in turn, was he. Still, he wondered if she actually _believed _any of it. She’d gone out of her brain denying ever having made that "prophecy" the term before. But he wasn’t quite game to ask her in case her answer was _yes_. Certainly most of the time she didn’t seem to take it seriously enough to scare him but…

‘A long life, productive,’ Dominique commented breathily, in the direction of his hand, as Trelawney appeared beside them. Dominique’s voice was soft like silk and it made him blink; he always forgot his best friend could sound like that when she chose to. ‘Two children,' continued the girl, 'perhaps three… not a regular career… disappointment amongst family members… confrontation… possible death…’

_Possible death?_ No kidding, given his status as a mortal. And – to his memory – you couldn’t actually get all that out of a palm reading – could you?

James caught the rapid wink that she shot at him, and then she continued in that same soft, wafty tone. ‘Marriage of course, though perhaps not before the children are born… Ahhhh, I see a dark haired woman… with Quidditch skills… and a habit of singing folk-songs…’  
Ophelia Wood, who had given up her own reading to watch with big-eyed envy as the part-Veela stroked the Quidditch Captain’s hand, let out a squeak and actually fell off her pile of cushions.

‘Marvellous, marvellous,’ purredTrelawney with a dreamy smile as Dominique looked up at the teacher and blinked rapidly. Apparently Trelawney, and all the other suckers in the room, had forgotten both the limited nature of palm reading and the fact that that little performance of Dominique’s would have been more appropriate to a Crystal Ball. Not to mention the fact that palmistry is more about revealing your past than your future. Or at least that's what the textbook said. ‘You are a _natural, _my dear.’

James rolled his eyes at Trelawny's back while she wandered off and then he glared at Dominique as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ophelia pick herself off the ground. His Keeper was the colour of beetroot juice beneath her short, dark hair and she was whispering rapidly with Kitwin.

‘Do you _have _to encourage her?’ he demanded in an undertone.

His cousin grinned. ‘Of course. 'Phelia's so funny. That, and I like watching you squirm.’ She took a big mouthful of the tea she was supposed to be letting cool for the set number of heartbeats, and then, after checking everyone else was busy, she leant forwards and whispered, ‘Besides, now we’ll be left alone. You’ve had this odd look on your face all morning, Jamie – first in Charms and then now. What happened at Quidditch practise to get so you pent up? Gregory Goyle do something to get in your face? Our Fred fall off his broomstick?’  
James lay down properly amongst the cushions – after all, she was right: once Trelawney had gone into an epiphany over you in class you would be ignored for the rest of the lesson – and said, with a frown, ‘It’s Professor You-Know.’

Dominique's eyes widened and she leant in towards him, silver blonde hair brushing his face. ‘What about her?’

‘I saw her. Well, it was Rosie who spotted her, actually. She – the Prof, not Rosie, I mean – was walking around the edge of the Quidditch field, really, really close to the Forbidden Forest, staring at he ground like she was searching for something.’ His fingers began playing absently with the hem of Dominique's school robes.

The girl looked thoughtful and wriggled one of her elbows deep into a scratchily satin cushion. ‘Did she have her wand out or anything?’  
‘No. I wondered about that myself. She – she was just looking, kind of staring, kind of deranged.’ He paused, realising he was exaggerating a bit – actually, she’d just been looking – then shrugged. ‘It was weird though. And at that time of day?_ I _loathe getting up for practise at that time of day and _I’m _the Captain.’

Dominique arched an eyebrow. ‘Well, I did warn you, James. I did tell you that if you joined that Quidditch team they’d make you captain before you could say_ souafle et cognards__._ No doubt about it. Not with your Dad, and his Dad, and _his _Dad behind you. It’s a miracle you’re not Seeker.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Meeks. For a start, I’m not built finely enough. Secondly, Rosie’s a marvellous Seeker – although this morning she did seem a bit out of the game – and thirdly, I thought you were the one concerned about Welsh, so why are we discussing Quidditch, eh?’  
Dominique shuddered slightly at Welsh's name and James realised that she was still more shaken up by the night before than she wanted to admit. ‘I _am_. James, what on earth can she be looking for? What could have brought her all the way from New Zealand to here? You – you remember that essay she set us? About the international wizarding schools?’

‘Yeah. Haven’t started it yet, but.’

‘It’s due today, idiot. Anyway, so the Oceania School – I figure that was where she went. And you know it’s almost as weird as Durmstrang. I mean – not as infamous for Dark Arts, you know, but mega sensitive. I can’t even say if it’s in Australia, or New Zealand, or the Papuan Highlands, or what, though a lot of evidence does seem to point to a spot on the west coast of Tasmania, which is pretty wild and mostly Muggle-free.’

He looked curious, despite himself. ‘That’s sort of surprising. They have – I mean – you think of Australia and places and you get this sort of easy-going image, don’t you? You don't hear much about them except for Quidditch, really. You know, like the eternal bickering between the Wollongong Warriors and the Thundelarra Thunderers.’

‘I thought we weren't going to talk Quidditch?' she asked with a smile. 'But I know what you mean. Perhaps – perhaps it’s all because the European presence is so recent. I mean, there’s a sort of dysfunction in the wizarding world down there. On the one hand you’ve got a magical cultural tradition going back _consistently _for over 60 000 years in some places, which makes us look tame while, on the other hand the schools are quite new, because schools are a European idea. Not that they don’t accept everyone and willingly but – I think that’s why they’re so secretive. Because they’re different to the other schools. There’s a blend of really ancient magic and modern magical theory.’  
‘But not the Dark Arts?’

She paused. ‘Not – not exactly, no. They were as up in arms against Grindelwald and Voldemort as we were. Did you know that Antipodean wizards and witches came and fought both of them even though they were so far removed from their daily lives? But--’

‘But what?’ He sat up, glancing around to check that everyone else was still at least partially glassy-eyed.

‘But they practise magic we don’t recognise anymore. Wandless magics. Almost _all _wandless magics, actually. And Mimi magic – that would be like us learning Goblin Magic, you know? And – and esoteric stuff. Like, like earth magic.’

‘There’s no such thing, Meeks. That’s just superstition. You either have magic or you don’t.’

Dominique sighed. ‘That’s what I always thought. It sounds like a load of hokum to me.’ She glanced down at his hand, which was still toying with her robe, and said, ‘Which makes me wonder why she set us the essay.’

‘What’d you mean?’

‘Well, professors never do anything “just because”, do they? There’s always a reason. She must have known we’d find that out about the Oceania College of Magical Institution. Why’d she want us to? What’s the point she’s making and… what is it she’s looking for?’  
‘I dunno.’ James sighed and drank down the rest of her tea, then spat out the leaves at the bottom in disgust. ‘Do you really reckon she’s bewitched Uncle Charlie?’

‘I suspect it,' she said, then took the teacup from his hand, held it up to the light, shook the leaves he’d spat out and cried with exaggerated delight, ‘Oh my, James. I see that dark-haired girl again and – wait – is that a little stack of wood? What on earth could that mean?’

James groaned as Ophelia fell from her cushions again. He caught Dominique in a headlock and knuckled her head, until her hair frizzed up, while she laughed a loud belly-laugh and punched him in the back. If Trelawney disapproved, she didn’t get a chance to say so, because at that moment the lesson was up and even the most devoted Divination students sped out of the room, happy for a bit of fresh air and a chance to save their eyes from the heavy layer of incense.


	13. A Conclusion Is Drawn

In the end Rose, Albus and Malfoy didn’t skip class at all because they’d been so busy raving about their Care Of Magical Creatures lesson that Rose's plan had quite temporarily slipped their minds. Albus and Rose had ended up in Herbology without even realising it, quite simply because – frankly – they’d just rolled along with the rest of the stunned Gryffindors. In fact, they’d only remembered their intention of scarpering after they’d entered Greenhouse Number 2 and found their Head of House up to his elbows in what looked – and smelt – like bog-ordinary cow poop.

‘_Bos taurus_ manure,’ announced Professor Longbottom, who Rose and Albus knew much more familiarly as Good-old-Neville when they weren't at school, upon their arrival. ‘The plants love it. And, because making plants happy is at least part of what Herbology is all about, it seems like a reasonable way to start the year. Those of you who’ve just arrived might like to put on some smocks over your school robes. As much as the plants love it, your school mates mightn’t be so chuffed if you turn up at lunch with it on your clothes.’ He straightened up and scratched his battle-scarred face with one hand – leaving a dark brownish smudge.

The Ravenclaws were all obediently putting on their smocks but the Gryffindors were still standing around like they’d _all _been hit by Bludgers.

Professor Longbottom grinned and said good-naturedly, ‘Oh, go on then. Tell me all about Professor Weasley’s dragon.’

And ten voices all burst out at once while the Ravenclaws looked on enviously and started spreading the manure into the pots, as though to show that, unlike Gryffindors, _they _could keep their mind on Herbology.

‘Like magic—’

‘Eye contact—’

‘Big as plates—’

‘Scorpius Malfoy knew all about it—’

‘Got to pat it—’

And then, as a chorus, as though they’d all agreed _en masse_ that that was the fundamental point, ‘WE GOT TO PAT IT!’

In the wake of sudden silence, Miranda Jones, who still seemed a little dazed and red in the face, muttered, ‘It was a real effin’ dragon.’

Their Head of House chuckled. ‘Right you are, Miss Jones. And now, if you’ve all gotten your delight out of your systems and have finished making myself and your Ravenclaw classmates thoroughly green with envy, I’d like to see you all smocked-up and getting mucky like the rest of us.’

This time there was a stampede to the smocks and soon all twenty students had gloved hands buried deep in the squelchy stuff and were putting it into pots, though not too close to the plants stems because, as Professor Longbottom had advised them, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing ‘and it can burn them.’

So, even when Rose remembered with chagrin that she’d wanted to skip the lesson, she couldn't manage to feel too bad about it. It was easy to put the strange behaviour of Professor Welsh, and the Resurrection Stone, and the Witch of Endor, all out of her mind when she was gardening and listening to the happy banter of the Head of House, who, just like every other witch in the school, she was rather fond of. How could you _not_ adore Professor Longbottom? He was sweet and human and to top it all off he had the appeal of being a Hero of the Battle of Hogwarts and – as a double bonus for Rose Weasley – was one of the few of _them_ who wasn’t actually related to her…

*

Scorpius Malfoy, on the other hand, was acutely bitter as he thought about the fact that Rose Weasley had wanted him and Albus to skip lessons with her, and that he’d damn well forgotten until it was too late and he was being pushed down the corridors towards History Of Magic. He let out a small groan as Binns started blathering on and tried to ignore the fact that, all around him, his equally bored Slytherin classmates were whispering and casting him odd little looks. He should have kept his mouth shut about the bloody dragon. He’d wanted to, he really had, but it had sort of been dragged out of him. Possibly, though he didn’t want to admit it, not even to himself, it had been because Rose had been there. Yes, Rose had been there and she actually hadn’t known an answer, while he had, and it was so rare that he knew something that she didn’t... It was quite unfair really – the girl was whip-smart and a Seeker as well – not fair at all, and sometimes Scorpius wondered how her poor brother coped, who was good at nothing but Arithmancy for some inexplicable reason – and sometimes he looked at her through his Dad’s eyes and she irritated him.

‘_Pompous little Weasley,'_ he could hear his father saying, _'the worst of her father and her mother combined, I’ve seen her strutting around – I should send you to Durmstrang, Scorpius, or the Japanese school. That was your grandfather's mistake, as well, you know. __There’s too high a percentage of Potter and Weasley and Granger blood in that place nowadays.’_ But then, of course, at the mention of sending him away Scorpius's mother would start her soft little mournful lament to herself beneath her breath and his father would put his hand over hers and start assuring her in soft-spoken, well-schooled Japanese that he hadn't meant it, he hadn’t really meant it, and he wouldn’t send the boy anyway, honest, and the listening to them would make Scorpius uncomfortable and he’d have to leave the room.

But that was why he hadn’t kept his mouth shut. Because of Rose. And now he regretted it because he’d reminded his classmates of his presence. Mostly they ignored him, or just downright forgot him. He was just that oddity that hung out with the Potter boy. He could deal with being an oddity and they accepted it. After all, he was still a Slytherin. House before all else, and they didn’t know his secret, his secret that only Al knew, the secret of the reason why they were best friends. They didn’t know that the Sorting Hat hadn’t wanted to put him in Slytherin at all. They didn’t know that he’d begged it until he’d almost cried, because he’d wanted to make his Dad proud. And it was worth it, worth being the oddity to the other Slytherins, worth it, because it meant so much to his father. And the others didn’t know that, because they probably didn’t even know that you _could _manipulate the Sorting Hat. But Al knew. Al knew, and it was Al who’d told him. They hadn’t been friends then – they didn’t really become friends until Second Year. But they’d run into each other on the Hogwarts Express and somehow, he still wasn’t sure how, he’d admitted he was scared of being put in a house other than Slytherin, and Al had admitted he was scared of being in a house other than Gryffindor, and they’d laughed a kind of panicked laugh and confessed that it was all about their Dads, and Mal had said his cared, and Al had said his _said_ he didn’t, _but then, Dad’s say that sort of thing_ – and he’d told Mal the secret about the begging.

The irony was that after they’d become unexpected friends in Second Year, they’d rather regretted talking the Sorting Hat out if it’s original choice, since then they could have been in the same house. But that was their secret and no-one would ever know it.

Binns kept droning and Malfoy looked around uncomfortably at the eyes watching him. Now they all remembered him again and he wasn’t just the oddity, no, now he was Draco Malfoy’s son, the Malfoys who the rest of the Slytherins could never quite trust any more, the Malfoys who had had to move their business deals overseas, into the Orient, after the Battle of Hogwarts when everyone had turned against them. The Malfoys, and the rumours about his mother―

Scorpius wished he’d skipped class with Rose and Albus instead.

*

They met at lunch. Scorpius had already wolfed his down while Rose and the rest of her classmates washed at the taps outside the greenhouse, attacking their arms with the yellow bars of soap that made rainbow bubbles, and so he hovered around the Gryffindor table, unwilling to sit at it, while they ate theirs just as quickly. Finally they stood up, Albus feeling a little ill at having speed-eaten, tossing the black stone back and forth in his hands until his cousin glared at him and made him stop.

Then Rose whispered, ‘I think that Professor Welsh is after the Hallows.’


	14. Educated Guesses

‘You – _what?_’ hissed Albus.

Scorpius shoved his hands into his pockets and looked bemused.

Rose put her own hands out and grabbed a boy by an arm each, shepherding them out of the Great Hall and, soon thereafter, into the tentative autumn sunlight. The courtyard was empty and so she pulled them towards the fountain at the centre and told them to sit on the rim that surrounded it. To her mild surprise they obeyed, without arguments, and she squatted down on her haunches in front of them them, one hand on Albus's knee and one hand on Scorpius's to give her balance. The movement made her small bag swing out into the open from beneath her cloak.

‘I think Professor Welsh is looking for the Resurrection Stone,’ she repeated calmly. Then she turned her gaze onto the Slytherin and said quietly, ‘You wouldn’t know about it and we aren’t supposed to either, but we all do, because after family dinner’s, and a bit too much wine and firewhiskey, the older tongues loosen up and it’s always a while before someone remembers that―’ (and here she put on a perfect imitation of her father’s voice) ‘―_little pigs have big ears_.’

Albus shrugged and Scorpius, of course, was no more enlightened then he had been a moment ago.

‘Anyway,' Rose continued after a pause, 'so apparently when the whole Battle of Hogwarts business was going down, and everyone was fighting, and before Uncle Harry did the whole dying-not-dying bit―’

‘Oh, you should hear the part about King’s Cross,’ butted in Albus, who was always ready to hear anything that contained even so much as a cameo by one of his name-sakes.

Rose ignored him and just kept talking, also ignoring the way that Scorpius’s eyebrows were rising slowly up his forehead. ‘—apparently he had this stone that could bring back dead people.’

‘You mean like a philosopher’s stone?’ asked Scorpius, who was too busy being overwhelmed by the fact that Rose was telling him all this without even asking if she could trust him, something even Albus had never done – they’d always steered clear of the past – and which meant that he wasn’t thinking all that straight.

‘No,’ she corrected impatiently. ‘A philosopher's keeps you alive. The Resurrection Stone brings you back after you’re dead – but someone else has to use it. Uncle Harry used it just before he handed himself over Voldemort. His parents, and his godfather, and Teddy’s Dad all appeared to him. And then…’

‘And then?’ interrogated Scorpius curiously.

‘And then he dropped it.’

_‘What?!’_

‘I know,' she agreed, 'it’s beyond insane. He just dropped it, out there in the Forbidden Forest where anyone could pick it up. You’d think he’d put it somewhere safe, or destroy it, or something, but noooo…’

Albus looked irritated. ‘Oi, that’s my Dad you’re talking about, Rosie. And it’s a bloody big forest, it’s not like you couldn’t search your whole life and never find it. Besides, what’s so bad about bringing back dead people? It’s not like they can hurt anyone, can they? I mean, they’re not inferi or something. And the Hallows were only dangerous when you put them all together…’

Rose shrugged. ‘All I know is that the grown-ups get all serious-sounding at that point and then they remember that us kids are in the room and pack us off to bed.’

Albus, who was still aggravated at the tone she’d talked about his Dad in, pulled out his own black stone and started slamming it from one hand to another.

‘But why would _she _be looking for it?’ asked the Slytherin, who remembered suddenly that the entire conversation had begun with the girl bringing up Professor Welsh.

Rose shrugged. ‘Maybe there’s some dead person she wants to talk to. She’s very pretty, maybe there’s a dead husband or something.’

'Maybe she killed the husband first,' muttered Albus darkly. Clearly he'd been listening to Dominique and James much more closely than Rose had thought.

‘But how would she know it was there?' asked Scorpius, puzzling through his thoughts out loud. 'How would she know where to look for it? I’ve never even heard of it and my—’ he paused, not really wanting to add, _and my Dad was at the Battle_, in case it reminded her that they’d been on different sides.

‘I don’t know,' Rose admitted. 'But if we kids know about it, who else might know? Our folks chuck some pretty big dinner parties. I reckon everyone in the Order knows. That’s a lot of people. You only have to have someone tell someone else and then it spreads.’

‘All the way to New Zealand?’ The blond looked doubtful.

Rose shrugged. ‘Didn’t you hear her and Uncle Charlie talking after dinner last night? She said that she has family in Britain.’

‘She act like it, turning her nose up at everything the way she does,’ grumbled Albus, and tossed the stone particularly high.

Rose snatched it with a Seeker’s reflex and closed her fist around it angrily. ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to keep fiddling with this thing, Albus Severus? You’re driving me _insane!_ And as for how she acts, maybe she's just a snob or...' The girl trailed off, turning her head slightly to get a better look at something. The boys followed her gaze and watched as their Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher walked along the open air corridor, beside the courtyard, deep in earnest discussion with Charlie Weasley. The Fifth Years remained silent until the pair vanished out of sight, into the Castle.

‘They’re awfully chummy awfully quick,’ observed Albus.

Rose half smiled being, in this case, not of the same opinions as her cousin Dominique. ‘If I didn’t think Welsh were after the Stone, I’d reckon it was cute. Dad’s been saying for years that Uncle Charlie should marry, reckons he’s letting the team down if even Uncle Percy has a family, and he doesn’t.’ She smiled whimsically, then returned her attention to Scorpius again. ‘Anyway, that’s not all I wanted to tell you. You know that text I got you to get me, Scorpius?’

He nodded.

‘Well, I think _it’s _about the Resurrection Stone too.’

The boys looked momentarily baffled.

Albus ventured, ‘But it’s a Mugg—’

‘Al!’ she shouted, exasperated. ‘I keep telling you, the Bible’s not exclusively a Muggle book. No religious text is. For goodness sake, three wizards were amongst the first people to visit baby Jesus! Just because you get it shoved it down your throat by your Muggle relations… my Muggle grandparents are Church of England, you know, but _they _don’t object to magic. Granddad Granger says it’s all just genetic, like getting blue eyes or red hair, and they aren’t silly enough to confuse it with – I don’t know – Muggle stories about the supernatural. And – and look at the Goldsteins; they’re Jewish and they're wizards. And Auntie Luna, look what she believes in… You’re so narrow minded, Albus.'

He looked really offended now. ‘Is there a _point _to this little rant or are you just exercising your jaws?’

She glared. ‘Of course there’s a point, and I was just about to make it before you distracted me with your stupid waffle. The point is that in both the original text and the modern translations – though it’s much clearer in the original text – a witch living at a place called Endor, or _En-dûr, _used a talisman, a stone, to bring the Prophet Samuel back from the dead. It’s not like – I don’t know – Jesus-type resurrection, whatever – but _exactly _like Uncle Harry’s descriptions of how his parents looked when he used the Stone. _Realer than ghosts but less real than regular living people_.’

Albus jerked his head up, a sudden trump card having fallen into his brain. ‘Alright then, Miss Smarty-Pants, if the Resurrection Stone was in the Old Testament, then answer me this: what about the theory that it was made by the Peverell brothers, who are ancestors of my Dad, and sure as hell weren’t alive in the Stone Age?’

‘The Old Testament does _not _play out in the Stone Age, you numbskull, and as for that, there are only two explanations.’

Albus smirked. ‘Lemme guess. Beadle’s story was accurate and Death _really did _meet them both on a bridge.’

Scorpius’s eyebrows rose again and his friend muttered, ‘I’ll tell you later, mate.’

Rose's patience snapped. ‘Fine. _Three_ explanations, then. There’s your ridiculous input, thank you so much for that. Then there’s the answer that the Stone is just much older than our parents believe.’

‘And somehow ended up in England after a long and worthy career resurrecting Prophets in the Near East?’ Albus looked both sceptical and amused.

‘Look, it’s not _implausible_. A lot of Jewish wizards and witches came here during the time of Grindelwald. But anyway, then there’s the other proposition.’

‘Which is?’

‘Which is that someone in our future travels back into the past with it and uses the Stone to resurrect that prophet.’

Scorpius and Albus exchanged a glance.

‘Oh, now _that’s _the most plausible one.’ Albus’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

His cousin smiled brightly. ‘Actually, I rather think that myself.’


	15. Of Portkeys And Possibilities

Albus laughed for a good three minutes until finally something about Rose’s ominous silence, and the more obvious act of Scorpius elbowing him sharply in the guts, worked its way into his head and made him realise that his cousin wasn't joking. Still, he had to ask the question, because he simply couldn't _not. _He wiped the back of his hand across his laughter-filled, damp eyes and said, ‘You’re kidding, right?’

Her lips had an insulted turn to them. ‘No, Mister Albus-Severus-Potter-of-the-silly-name, I’m not kidding.’

‘It’s not a silly name.’ Albus glanced sideways to catch the tail-end of Scorpius hiding a grin, and he met it with a cranky look. ‘Hey, if we want to get onto the topic of silly names—’

‘There’s nothing silly about _Scorpius_. It’s a traditional name in my family _and_ a constellation.’

‘Ooo, exciting. Well, I’m named after two Hogwarts Headmasters, you know, who were some of the bravest men my Dad ever met and—’

‘Sweet for the both of you,’ broke in Rose crisply with the security of someone who’s name is so regular that no-one can find anything to mock.

Albus glared at her. ‘Rose. You know full well that time travel isn’t possible.’ He paused. ‘Unless you’re thinking of something like a Time-Turner.’

She sighed dramatically. ‘Great idea. How many turns do you think getting back three thousand or so years would take, eh?’

‘It’s possible, but,’ he said, then realised to his horror that he was defending her own hair-balled theory.

Thankfully, she didn’t comment, but said simply, 'Possible, maybe. But not the simplest solution.'

‘And what’s the simplest solution?’ asked Scorpius before his best friend could start another argument.

She smiled at him. ‘A portkey.’

‘A – what?’

‘A portkey,’ she repeated with growing impatience, before drawling into sarcasm, ‘You know, when the _Portus _spell is cast on objects, enabling you to move you so cleverly from one p―’

‘Cut it out, Rosie.’ Albus looked like he was getting tired of the conversation. ‘And I thought that that was exactly the point. One _place _to another, not one time to another.’

‘Do you know for sure that’s so? I don’t remember ever asking. I mean, we presume place to place, but they’re made to appear at Point B and then return back to Point A, right?’

‘Yeah, but…’

‘Well, who’s to say that Point A isn’t in the past, timed cleverly to appear through the future to Point B, to return again to Point A?’ She looked triumphant. Albus was starting to get a suspicion that she’d spent the entire night up on this piece of minor insanity and that that was the explanation for the shadows she'd had beneath her eyes.

‘But Rose,’ ventured Scorpius. ‘Apart from the fact that to time a portkey to appear in the future would take phenomenally complicated spellwork, how on earth would you know _when _and _where _to make it turn up? Presuming, for argument’s sake,’ he added rapidly, at Albus’ raised-eyebrow look, ‘that you were wanting a specific thing and at a specific time, like this Resurrection Stone, and obviously a wizard willing to touch the portkey and take it back with him. How could you organise all that?’

Rose glowed; clearly she’d been hoping this question would be raised. Even more clearly, the answer was obviously her pride and joy. _‘Divination,’ _she practically purred.

‘But… but Divination isn’t really seeing into the future, is it? It’s more about seeing the present and drawing rational conclusions from it,’ said Scorpius, then added quickly, ‘That’s what my father says.’

Rose grinned. ‘Word for word of what my mother says, only she adds that they draw _irrational _conclusions. But just imagine you’re superdooper good at those conclusions drawn and could extrapolate over say… three thousand and a bit years?’

Albus sighed. ‘I take it you’ve someone in mind then?’

‘Oh yes,’ she nodded. ‘How about the big fat famous prophet in the middle of all this? How about Samuel himself? A prophet is a seer, after all.’

‘Samuel?’ Albus’ voice had reached new levels of incredulity.

Scorpius could rather understand how his friend was feeling. He cleared his throat. ‘Just let me get this straight – you mean Samuel, the Prophet, who was an advisor to King Saul after the Israelites demanded Saul be made king in the fact place?’

Rose looked impressed. ‘Oh, you know the story really well. That’s the one. But by the time Samuel’s dying, King Saul had started to go off the right path and his army was being beaten up by his enemies, and David was on the other side―’

‘The one who later became King David, the poet who wrote his Psalms―’

‘And Saul’s freaked out and couldn't get an answer from God and so called Samuel up from the dead.’

Rose and Scorpius stared at one another, almost shyly, delighted in the discovery of their common knowledge.

Albus made a very rude noise and waved his hands between their faces. ‘Hello, if Sunday School’s over, I have to ask – why do we care?’  
His cousin looked surprised. ‘What do you mean, why do we care?’

Albus shrugged. ‘Why do we care if any of it’s even a true story, or if there really was a witch who used the Resurrection Stone, or if the Resurrection Stone got zapped back into the past somehow?’

Rose bit her lip, fighting her desire to speak, but then lost the battle and burst out, ‘Don’t you see? If that story really is history, then it was a really important turning point in the past. You know how Professor Binns talks about watersheds, pivotal moments in the past, well that was one! Now, the more I research about the Stone, the more I believe that it’s never left our time-line before now. And that means that it’s in our future that it will go back to the past. We – we have to find it, especially if now Welsh is after it too, and make sure it happens, that it goes back, that this witch can use it. Otherwise the past won’t happen like that and…’ She stopped and looked a little crazy; her hair was escaping her plait and the dark shadows around her eyes were reappearing, and made them flash oddly.

Scorpius and Albus glanced at each other and then stood up slowly and each took hold of one of her elbows, and started walking her out of the courtyard; people had begun to look at them strangely.

‘Rosie,’ said Albus, ‘I reckon you’re thinking too much and not getting enough sleep. It’s only the end of the first week of term and you look like you’ve just run the exam gauntlet. You’re taking it all much too much to heart, and the conclusions being leapt to are bloody manic.'  
She let out a small moan. ‘I know that, it just feels right – I just _believe _it and…’

Scorpius squeezed her arm. ‘Have you thought about the fact that since it all take place in the past it’s already happened, even though the point of instigation is yet to come?’

The others slanted surprised looks in his direction, and he shrugged. ‘I know, all this time travel stuff makes my brains knot too, but I’m trying here.’

Rose grinned lopsidedly and let them walk her to the edge of the castle, towards the lake. Then she jerked and exclaimed, ‘Lunch break must be over! Haven’t we got class?’

‘Relax, Rosie, it’s Friday. We haven’t got any classes Friday afternoons this term, remember? You really _do _need more sleep.’

She sighed, and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. ‘I know. It’s Quidditch practice at dawn that does it. I don’t see why we can’t be out in the evenings like we used to do, when Victoire was Captain, that was _much _more humane.’ For a moment, she looked nostalgic; that had been her first year on the team, and with James as a Forth Year, and Victoire as Keeper, and Louis as a Chaser… two part-Veelas on the team had done wonders for distraction. But now Louis had head off to finish his schooling in France, and Victoire was of course already done with school and travelling the Middle East with Teddy Lupin as something mysterious for the Ministry of Magic and so…

‘I guess you’re right. I’m being silly. But – you know I can’t help but wonder – if – if Samuel _did_ have the spellwork to organise a portkey―’

‘You wouldn’t take it, would you?’ asked Scorpius abruptly, who, unlike Albus, seemed to have realised the direction that her thoughts were swirling in.

'No – um – I mean – that would be silly – but…’ she shrugged, suddenly defeated. ‘Besides, without the Resurrection Stone, what would be the point?’ She pulled her elbows free, tossed Albus his rock back, since she'd still been clutching the stupid thing till it left an imprint in her hand, and said, ‘Right then. So if we’ve got the afternoon off, would either of you fancy some Quidditch? I can rustle up a few players at the bat of an eye.’

And half an hour later Rose, surrounded by her gaggle of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor girl friends – who had started to think that she’d forgotten about them – and the two boys, were down at the Quidditch field, split into two groups of three, playing mock Quidditch…


	16. The Oceania College of Magical Education

While Rose and the fifth-years were gathering up their broomsticks, James was sitting at a table in the Great Hall scrawling madly on a piece of parchment. It was the last of the paper Professor Welsh had set them, back on Wednesday, but which he hadn’t got around to writing up till now. Most of it was simply paraphrased from Dominique’s work, actually, and it was partially illegible anyway because he’d spilt pumpkin juice on it, but it would just have to do. Between detention and Quidditch and lessons and creeping around the castle at night he’d kind of forgotten about his homework.‘We’re going to be late for class,’ warned Meeks with a note of impatience in her voice. They were already the only ones left in the Hall except an inordinately old Mrs Norris, who was sniffling stiffly around the Ravenclaw Table. With a groan, James grabbed his stuff and shoved it in his satchel and they hurried away to the DADA classroom.

‘Just great,’ he was muttering to himself. ‘Woman already loathes me and now I’m late and have got nothing but screwed-up homework…’

‘I’m not sure she considers us important enough to _loathe_,’ managed Dominique, who seemed in constant vacillation between conspiracies and trying valiantly to play it all down.

‘Heh, me she loathes. Have you seen how she looks at me?’

They pushed the door open and stumbled in, every other student turning to look at them, and the Slytherins slightly gloating in advance.  
‘Mr Potter, Miss Weasley, how decent of you to make the time for us in your busy schedules,’ murmured Welsh’s strange voice. They glanced around, but couldn’t see her.

‘Please, take a seat.’

They did – of course, the only desk left was right up the front, which meant clomping through the whole classroom – and sat, and glanced to see what everyone else had out, and dug through their bags for quill and parchment and the textbook they’d been set.

Which was when Professor Welsh stepped out of the wall.

Or rather, thought James bemused, it was as though she’d been standing there the whole time but only now could he see her, simply because she’d moved. It wasn’t that she’d been invisible, more that she’d sort of… _blended in_ with the classroom behind her like… he paused mentally. He’d read about certain tribal wizards who could camouflage themselves by becoming one with their surroundings. But he’d never seen it actually done before.

Beside him, Dominique had stiffened.

‘Your classmates have already handed in their homework,’ said Welsh calmly. ‘If you two would be so kind?’

Dominique held her neatly written parchment up, and James banged around for his (how could something he had only _just _put in his bag already be at the bottom?), found it and held it up too. Welsh waved her wand and the papers flew into her hands. James stared at her wand. It was the second time he'd seen it clearly, but the first time he'd been duelling Goyle and had rather had other things on his mind. Now he just looked at it. For a start, it was white, and he couldn't recall actually having seen a white wand before. Pale, yes, but not white. And there was something about it...

The Professor sent the papers onto a pile on her desk without even looking at them. ‘Well now, I’m sure that any of you capable of a little lateral thinking will have already worked out that I was educated at the Oceania College of Magical Education.’

It was clear that the whole class_ had_ worked that out, even knuckle-heads like Goyle, and they all sat up a little straighter, faces alight with renewed curiosity, and nodded.

Welsh pursed her lips and ran her thumb absently along her wand. It glinted lightly. ‘I’m sure you’ll have understood from your reading that this makes our magical cultural backgrounds very different. For example, something you will probably have discovered in your research is that at Oceania we have no Houses, such as Hogwarts has.’

There was a murmur as they all tried to imagine the lack of partition and, frankly, didn’t much like the idea. Goyle and James grimaced at each other.

Ophelia put up her hand. ‘Professor… that would lead to real school unity, wouldn’t it?’

The witch did her half-not-smile. ‘Oh yes. Oceania College is one of the most united in the world… us against everyone else.’ James couldn’t work out if that were elation or bitterness in her voice. The Professor shrugged. ‘However, I doubt it’s the school’s internal structure that would interest you the most.' Her voice was cool.

To everyone’s surprise, this time it was Goyle who put up his hand. ‘Miss, do you really learn wandless magic and – and – and the magic of other magical creatures? Like, like Goblins?’ It was clear that the Slytherin found this both offensive to his elitist notions, but also deeply appealing to his more base interests in power.

And now, for the first time, Professor Welsh rose her grey eyes to the classroom and looked at them properly.

‘Oh yes, indeed, that’s true. Not goblin magic – goblins never did take that well to the Southern Hemisphere to be honest,’ (there was a smattering of laughter). ‘But Min-Min magic, for example, that we learn. As for wandless magic…’

Ignoring her wand, she reached out a finger on her free hand and pointed it towards the cluttered bookshelves. The small alabaster dog with the cartouche woke to life, standing up with a shake and a yawn and then pacing up and down along its shelf. Dominique and James exchanged a glance. The little Egyptian dog was almost identical to the teacher’s patronus.

‘Here in Britain,’ continued Welsh, ‘you have an unfortunate reliance on wandwork. The wand is only as good as it’s wizard, is a proverb spoken often but little believed. An able witch or wizard can channel magic through any object, including their own body. The wand is more a focal point for the slack of mind.’

Ophelia put her hand up again. ‘Professor Welsh… your wand… what’s it _made _of?’

A hush settled over the classroom. To ask outright of another witch or wizard, especially a professor, what their wand was made of would be like asking which kind of underwear they preferred, or whether they liked to sleep naked. It just wasn’t the done thing.

The Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher didn’t seem to mind, however. Instead she held her wand up in front of them and said calmly, ‘Bone.’

They all breathed in. Not a soul in the classroom, of course, had a wand made of anything but wood; many different varieties of wood, yes, and different magical cores, but wood nevertheless. And most of them even came from the same store, from Ollivander’s, all except Beatrice Flint, who’d turned eleven while her family was on holiday in Russia and had had a wand made by the eminent Troiski sisters instead.

‘B-bone?’ asked Ophelia, staring at her own wand and then back up at Welsh’s.

‘Bone,’ agreed the professor.

Perhaps encouraged by the fact that the professor seemed to be not minding the conversation at all, Goyle said gruffly, ‘But from a magical beast, right?’

Or maybe a wizard, thought James suddenly, mind alight with half forgotten tales about the weird rites and the cannibalism that had been stamped out amongst some more far-flung wizarding communities by the International Wizengamot of 1896.

But the professor gave a small dry chuckle; it was an unexpected and completely startling noise. ‘Not at all. It's from a canine's leg, Mr Goyle.’ She paused. ‘Just a regular dog.’

‘A _dog?_’ He looked appalled.

Still, the teacher didn't seem to care. She was clearly in full swing now, her voice quite enthusiastic and a little harder to follow. ‘Oh yes, a dog. The dog is my totem – you would cal it your Patronus, but that’s just word play, they both mean _patron_ or _guardian_.’ She pointed her wand towards the door, murmured, ‘_Expecto patronum!’_ and the skinny long-legged dog tottered up the classroom between their chairs. Everyone, except perhaps James and Dominique, made big eyes at it. ‘Students don’t attend Oceania until their twelfth birthdays, you know. Instead, they are expected to spend the year of their eleventh birthday under the guidance of a mentor, until they find their totem and their wand. Some take the whole twelve months, as well. Now, none of you are eleven anymore, but I think its high time you found yours.’

‘But we already have our wands,’ said James, his voice cool.

‘Indeed. But you don’t have Patronuses. Or can you already master the spell that your father is so famous for?’ She was gazing at James intently, her eyes suddenly as cool as his voice had been.

He raised his wand leisurely and muttered, ‘_Expecto patronum_.’ A silver bear streaked from his wand and advanced towards the teacher. For the first time in his life he appreciated his father's obsessive nature when it came to certain spells. The brown cave bear, or bruin, long since extinct in its British homelands, seemed to ripple with muscle even as you looked through its opaqueness; the kind of animal that would rip dogs and men alike apart, were it still present in the world. There was a certain unpleasant irony to it that hadn’t been lost on James and he smiled coolly. The dog and the bruin Patronuses circled each other, and Dominique, for fear of the growing tension in the room, raised her own wand and a heartbeat later a sleek silver stoat gambolled between the two merrily.

‘Impressive,’ said the teacher and for a moment she actually _did _look genuinely impressed. ‘Corporeal Patronuses. Can anyone else show their guardians?’

There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘Then, in that case, the rest of us shall start learning it in the next lesson, while Mr Potter and Miss Weasley shall be set alternate work on their own. But for the moment, please turn to chapter two. And,’ she glanced at the Patronuses at her feet rather than the creators, ‘don’t forget that those who have detention with me are to report to this classroom at six p.m. sharp.’


	17. Go Another Round

Rose Weasley collapsed happy-faced and red-cheeked onto the sofa by the fire, took a handful of sweets that her cousin Lily had offered her, popped one into her mouth, and sighed contentedly.

‘You look pleased with yourself,’ observed Dominique from the table where she stood, sorting through the contents of her satchel to try and work out if any of it could be needed at a detention with Professor Welsh, before deciding no and sending it zooming up the stairs to her dorm. She stuffed her wand in the pocket of her long jacket, glanced towards the stairs again, and raised her eyebrows at Rose.

Her cousin grinned. ‘Been playing Quidditch all arvo. ’S good for you. Shame _you _can’t play. I miss Victoire and Louis.’

Dominique rolled her eyes. ‘I _can _play, I just don’t want to. I can think of a thousand better things to do than get all sweaty on a broomstick.' She paused, smirked slightly, then pulled her mind back out of the gutter and added, 'Besides, James seems to think that this year you’ll make it back to the top of the table.’

Rose yawned. She wasn't so convinced. ‘Hopefully. Here, what’d you do to your face?’

Dominique put her hand to her cheek. ‘Ah. We had our first Care of Magical Creatures this afternoon, last lesson for the day. Marvellous – not a dragon like I heard you guys got, because Uncle Charlie’s friends had picked it up by lunchtime to continue its journey – but Bogwoppits, and one of them scratched me.’

Rose pointed her wand at her cousin’s face and the nasty mark vanished. Dominique blinked. She put her hand to her cheek and felt the skin smooth. ‘I didn’t know you were that good at healing spells…’

‘I’m not. It’s purely cosmetic. I just altered how you looked. Don’t worry, it’s only temporary.’

She knew the part-Veela was, despite everything else, just a bit possessive of her looks.

Then Dominique glanced at the stairs yet again.

‘What’re you so twitchy about?’ asked Rose.

‘James. I’m going to have to fetch him in a minute. We’ll be late for detention, the way he’s going. If it wasn’t bad enough that we were already late for Welsh's class―’

Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear, isn't that how the old saying goes? Dominique might have thought that James was upstairs but, at that moment, the portrait-door swung open and "nobody" came through. Seeing that the common room was unusually empty, James pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and said hurriedly, ‘Meeks, you―’

‘You’ve got your Dad’s Cloak!’ exclaimed Rose, wide-eyed.

‘Yeah, hi Rosie, can we discuss that later?’ James grabbed Dominique’s arm. ‘Meeks, you’ve gotta come.’

‘James! We have detention!’

‘Never mind detention, it’s Uncle Charlie, he’s been hurt!’

‘Hurt – what?’ She didn't shake his hand off her arm, but hurried instead with him towards the portrait.

Rose had jumped up. ‘What do you mean, Uncle Charlie’s hurt?’

They didn’t seem to hear her. ‘Bet Welsh is involved,’ James was muttering darkly.

Rose blinked. ‘Welsh – wait – there’s something I have to tell you about her!’ But they’d already disappeared beneath the Cloak and out of the room. She stood and stared at the door and, for a split second, vacillated in a panicked kind of way. She wished that _she _had an Invisibility Cloak, or at the very least knew some disillusionment spells, or – oh, what did it matter? If Uncle Charlie had been hurt then she had every right to see him, didn’t she? She snatched up her bag and hurried out past the portrait, the Fat Lady protesting at the sudden traffic, and ran, full-speed, to the Hospital Wing, wondering vaguely if she’d passed James and Dominique on the way.

The commotion coming from the Wing told her that she’d reached the right place and, moreover, that Uncle Charlie obviously wasn’t on death’s doorstep because the loudest noise of it all was his familiar voice roaring, ‘NO, RONALD, I WILL _NOT _LAY HERE QUIETLY!’

Rose’s feet stumbled as her Dad’s voice bellowed right back, ‘WHAT’S THE POINT IN BEING A BLOODY AUROR IF YOU CAN’T EVEN MAKE YOUR OWN BROTHER SEE SENSE?!’

‘Please, gentlemen,’ murmured the Headmistress's voice, so softly that Rose could barely here it from where she stood in the hall.  
The prefect bit her lip but then, not wanting to get caught eavesdropping, poked her head around the door and asked gamely, ‘May I come in? I heard Uncle Charlie got hurt and I was worried…’

McGonagall put a hand over her eyes and sighed in a pained way, clearly imagining what the ward would look like if _all_ of the young relatives of her Care of Magical Creatures professor turned up. Charlie, on the other hand, who was clearly pleased for the distraction she'd provided, sang out, ‘Of course, Rosie darling. Doesn’t bad news travel fast though!’

Rose hurried to his bedside. Her Dad grinned at her warmly as she permitted him a brief hug and a ruffling of her hair, but then he turned back again towards his elder brother and said in his sternest voice (for what it was worth), ‘Don’t think Rosie will distract me, Charlie. You’re staying in that bed.’

Charlie gave the Headmistress a pleading look. ‘Minerva… you don’t think it was overreacting to call in Aurors just because I got jumped in the dark?’

Professor McGonagall was stern. ‘Charlie Weasley, I’m fully aware that you pride yourself on your hardy constitution, but I would consider multiple hexes and a broken nose to be a little more serious than being “jumped”, as you put it so succinctly. You were unconscious when you were found.’

Rose stared at her uncle with wide eyes.

At that point, a number of startling things happened.

The first thing was the appearance of Uncle Harry, holding his first-born son firmly by the collar with one hand and his niece with the other, a grim look on his face. The shimmery stuff of the Cloak was nowhere to be seen, and both sixth-years were protesting at the top of their lungs, Dominique the loudest, shouting, ‘You have to believe us, Uncle Harry, Professor Welsh is up to something, she really is, she’s looking for something!’

The second thing was Rose herself shouting out, ‘Yes, and it’s the Resurrection Stone!’

And the third thing, with that predictable sense of comic timing that the Universe so seems to enjoy indulging in, was, of course, Welsh herself striding through the door right into the middle of it all.

Rose's breath hitched.

The Professor, however, didn’t seem to notice any of the children but went straight to Charlie’s bedside and asked in a low voice, ‘Are you alright?’

He grinned. ‘Nothing a couple of potions won’t fix, Remy, but I’m a bit peeved about the nose.’ He touched it tentatively; it had been set well, but there was still the smallest kink.

Welsh smiled, and this time it was that proper smile again, the one that Dominique and James had seen her use when they were watching her from beneath the Invisibility Cloak. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘It kind of suits you.’

Then there was an awkward silence as she seemed to realise that she was being stared at by almost everyone in the room and that those who weren't staring were at least observing her with mild curiosity. She straightened back up again and her grey eyes grew cool as she fixed them on her little audience – Ron Weasley and his daughter, Harry Potter and his son, their niece, and the nurse, and the Headmistress. Welsh turned first, business-like, to James and Dominique. ‘May I inquire as to why you aren’t in my classroom for detention as requested, Mr Potter, Miss Weasley?' she asked in a deadly voice. 'Mr Goyle is waiting obediently enough.’

James' eyes glinted. ‘We’ll, you’re here, so there wouldn’t be much point in us being there, would there?’

His father's grip tightened on his collar. ‘You have detention in the first _week_?’ asked Harry in a voice not that dissimilar from Welsh's. Well, apart from the accent. Rose's eyes flitted from James to Uncle Harry, a little cautiously. She'd only seen Uncle Harry roaringly angry once in her life, but she had no desire to see it again...

Welsh turned her attention to the Head of the Auror Department. ‘Received on the second day of term, actually. And you… you must be Mister Harry Potter.’ She gave him a long, hard look: if her eyes always lingered strangely on James, then they were positively stuck upon his father.

Harry looked at her calmly, unmoved by her gaze. ‘Yes. And you must be Professor Welsh from New Zealand. I’m on the School Board, you know.’

‘Yes. Kia ora, Auror Potter,’ she said, greeting him coolly in Maori, the words blending oddly with the English, her hands deep in her pockets.

Rose wasn't sure she'd ever been in such weird circumstances.

‘You have to listen!’ burst out Dominique. ‘She’s looking for something!’

‘Aren’t we all?’ mused Charlie laconically, then added, ‘I hate to ask this, Dominique, but have you been spying on the Professor?’  
Welsh had gone an odd colour.

Rose couldn't contain herself any longer. ‘She’s looking for the Resurrection Stone!’ she shouted a second time and, this time, they all heard her.

Uncle Harry’s eyes narrowed slightly and he let go of Dominique's jacket, rubbing his short beard in an absent kind of way.

Ron spread his hands out in front of his older brother in a conciliatory way and said, ‘_That_, mate, is why a little broken nose has Aurors involved.’

‘You – you _knew_?’ shrilled Rose.

The adults ignored her.

‘You can vouch for Professor Welsh, Minerva?’ asked Uncle Harry, as though the matter were of little importance.

The Headmistress nodded, tight-lipped. ‘Of course. As I can for all of my teachers.’

‘And you vouch for her too, Charlie?’ Harry asked.

The dragon-wrangler gave the Maori woman an inscrutable look, then nodded.

‘But you only met on Wednesday!’ exclaimed Dominique, outraged. ‘She’s bewitched him, Uncle Harry, she has!’

Professor Welsh seemed to continuing in her process of colour-changing - Rose rather thought that she'd have been ashen by now if she hadn't been so dark to start with. Charlie, however, burst into laughter; big, deep, belly laughter. ‘Oh, you’re priceless, Dee, just like your mother! _Bewitched me_, heh heh…’ He kept chuckling, as though it were the most amusing thing he'd heard all year.

Uncle Harry nodded his head curtly. ‘Right. Well then. I think it’s time this menagerie and I had a little heart to heart. If you’ll excuse us…’

Giving the sixth-years a significant look, he shepherded them out of the hospital ward and beckoned Rose to follow. He did pause at the door, however, glancing back towards the other adults, and added, ‘I’d advice doubling their detention, Professor Welsh, though I doubt it’ll have much impact.’

If Rose hadn’t known better, she’d have thought Uncle Harry was grinning.


	18. Uncle Harry

They were marched in silence down the corridors before being presented with a plain oak door that none of them even remembered having seen before. The room on the other side was small and pleasant, with a bright fire leaping welcomingly in the early autumn night, and a circle of over-stuffed lounge-chairs around it, rather like the Gryffindor common room minus the red and gold hangings and, in the very centre, a small squat table. Harry Potter made a smooth motion with his wand and the table spread with a teapot, and four teacups, and a plate of scones, and a pot of raspberry jam, and a stub of happy yellow butter. It had the marks of Hogwart’s kitchen house-elves all over it and was steaming fit to make their mouths water.

‘Where _are_ we?’ asked James in astonishment as his father let go of him and he rubbed his red ear rapidly.

Uncle Harry chose a seat and poured himself a cup of tea. Dominique watched him, thrown a little off-balance by the fact that they weren’t being yelled at by now – she was pretty damn sure that _her _Dad, great as he was, would have been roaring in rage by now – and it made her nervous that her uncle wasn’t. She sat opposite him at an angle where she could see him without him staring at her. They _said _he had never been any good at Legilimency, but she didn’t want to put it to the test.

‘The Room of Requirement,’ answered Uncle Harry cheerfully as he spooned sugar liberally into his tea, and a boyish smile lit up his face. ‘I’m quite glad it still works, you know. Oddly we never did put that to the test after the Fiendfyre ate it up and somehow I’ve never got around to asking about it since.’ He glanced at Rose, who was watching him a little wide-eyed as he calmly stirred his tea, then started buttering a scone. ‘You know I do believe it was in this room that your parents finally got their heads on straight and realised they loved each other. Of course, middle of a battle was hardly the most appropriate time for snogging, but there you go.’

Rose looked delighted and, on the wave of that piece of knowledge shared, she reached out and took herself a scone.

‘Oh yes, do help yourselves,’ instructed the Auror. ‘I don’t know about you but I’m famished. Weirdly, I thought that being Head of Department would mean an office job but I seem to miss dinner more regularly than I used to.’ And he munched away on his scone and there was a clatter of china as his son helped himself cautiously to a cup of tea.

‘Oh, honestly!’ exclaimed Dominique, who just couldn’t take any more of the good-will. ‘Aren’t you mad at us?’

James groaned, and kicked at her leg.

His father hid a grin. ‘What a good question. And now you can tell me all the reasons why I should be mad.’

Dominique looked baffled. ‘Well… James nicked your Cloak, and we’ve both got detention already, and we’ve been spying on Professor Welsh…’

‘Thank you _so_ much, Meeks,’ muttered James.

She snorted. ‘What? He already knew all that, or did you have your ears blocked in the Hospital Wing?’ She glanced back at her uncle. ‘Aren’t you going to do anything about Welsh?’

‘Professor Welsh was, if I’m not mistaken Dominique, waiting in her classroom for you to turn up for detention when Charlie was attacked, or did I mishear that part? I imagine I can check with young Goyle if you’d like me to.’

Dominique looked sour. ‘She’s still creepy. She does weird magic, maybe even Dark Arts. Lots of – horrible stuff!’

Uncle Harry put down his teacup. ‘I don’t doubt it. She comes from a different side of the globe and her magic is bound to be "weird". On the other hand, we got a letter from Lily this morning saying that the DADA teacher was odd but teaching them Patronuses. Eleven, and learning Patronuses! Well, you can imagine Lil’s pleased since I didn’t teach James and Albus till they were thirteen. And although I wish her good luck with wrapping First Years’ cluttered little heads around it, I can’t say I disapprove.’

Dominique sniffed. ‘I think it’s just a way to give every class the same stupid lesson.’

James snorted into his teacup.

‘Besides, what about Uncle Charlie?’ Dominique still hadn’t touched neither tea nor scones; she had her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

‘I have good witches and wizards looking into that, Dominique. The fact is that Charlie was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. There have been some—’

‘Funny types about!’ exclaimed James, spilling tea down his robes in his sudden agitation. ‘That’s what Hagrid said the night of our first detention, when Uncle Charlie arrived!’

Harry gave his son a half-smile. ‘Exactly. The Forest is being used for some less-than-reputable purposes at the moment, and Charlie got in the way. That, and they were probably annoyed about the dragon-manticore beast-thing.’

It’s was Rose’s turn to almost lose her tea: as it was, she choked. ‘What?’

James just beamed at his Dad. ‘You know about that? _Merlin, _but it was an ugly brute. I thought Hagrid bought it, though, so why would they care that Uncle Charlie sent it away?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Sure, they sold it to Hagrid, but only because they knew he’d stumble on it one way or another anyway; it was more _their _guard dog than his pet. We’ve been watching them for a while now, you see. We know they’re smuggling, mostly. Petty stuff, cursed objects, the usual. In and out of the Forest via Hogsmeade, primarily. But don’t worry, we’ll catch them at the right point in time. It’s my concern that there might be a deeper, ulterior motive to their presence, however and that, Rosie, leads me to you.’

She swallowed a too-big mouthful of too-hot tea. James had to thump her on the back.

‘Me?’ she asked, cautiously. She rather regretted her outburst of shouting in the Hospital Wing, now, but of course it was too late to pretend it hadn’t happened.

‘Hmm. Yes, you. What do you know about the Resurrection Stone, and you have to spoken to about it?’

‘I – I – I haven’t _blabbed_, if that’s what you mean!’ Her anger at the implicit accusation bit hard, and she glared at her uncle, despite herself. ‘It’s not _my _fault Welsh wants it! I don’t even know how she heard about it in the first place, around the other side of the world!’

‘So _that’s _what she’s after?’ asked James, fascinated.

Harry rubbed his cheek, his short beard glinting darkly in the firelight. ‘I take it the details of the story aren’t news to _any _of you?’ There were days when he wondered why he was surprised by what his children seemed to know; after all, he’d been much the same at their age, hadn’t he?

All of them shook their heads.

‘So you know what it does, and where it came from and… where it ended up?’

This time, they all nodded.

‘But we don’t _blab!’_ repeated Rose with her mother’s sense of hurt pride. ‘Albus and Mal and I—’

‘Mal?’ repeated Uncle Harry sharply.

‘Malfoy,’ explained James quickly. ‘Scorpius.’

‘I _know_ who he is, James. Could you go fetch your brother, please, and, on the way past the Hospital Wing, if the Headmistress is still there, could you ask for her to have Scorpius fetched. She’ll know where we are.’

James stood up and hurried out.

There was a long and stubborn, somewhat unpleasant, silence after he had gone. The minutes ticked past on the small clock near the fire, seeming to tock-tock-tick ridiculously loudly. Uncle Harry just sat there and ate, and drank tea, as if he couldn’t _tell_ that it werea long and unpleasant silence, which irritated Dominique enormously. Finally she turned and asked Rose, ‘What would Welsh, of all people, want with the Stone, then?’

‘How should _I _know?’ Still angry, Rose glared over at her uncle. ‘And I know what you’re thinking. I know you think that Scorpius told his Dad about it, but he didn’t, because he _wouldn’t_ do that. And he only even found out about it this very afternoon, that’s the first time Al and I told him everything. And even if he _had _known before that, he wouldn’t have told. Scorpius is decent!’

‘He’s also right behind you,’ commented Harry with a slight smile as the three boys walked into the room, Scorpius slightly flushed from having heard the end of Rose’s outburst.

She bit down on her scone furiously.

Scorpius was nervous already, anyway. He’d never actually been face-to-face with Albus’s father before. They were almost the spitting image of each other, Mr Potter and Albus, although of course Al didn’t have the scar, did he? ‘Mr Potter, sir,’ Scorpius said. ‘I swear I never told my father anything that would have – I mean – not that my Dad would—’ He trailed off, quite distressed.

Dominique realised that two more chairs, and two more teacups, had appeared. Her uncle said, ‘Sit down, boys,’ then fixed his gaze onto his own youngest son and asked abruptly, ‘Albus, did _you _know that your brother had taken my Cloak without permission?’

Albus blinked, a little surprised by this sudden line of questioning. ‘Yes, Dad,’ he admitted.

‘And it didn’t occur to you to tell me?’

The youngest Potter male looked outraged. ‘I wasn’t going to tattle, was I?’

For the first time in a long time James felt a rush of affection for his kid brother and also a bit of uneasy guilt for having Charmed the boy’s owl. He made a mental note to remove the spell as soon as possible.

‘And does your sister know too?’ continued Harry sternly.

Albus and James exchanged a glance, unsure.

‘Yes,’ offered up Dominique quietly. ‘She was there on Tuesday night when we were talking bout it, remember?’

And they sat there and waited for the punishment to fall, sat there and waited for the Head Auror to do absolutely anything except that which he actually did – which was to break into a huge grin. ‘And here I was afraid of giving it to you because I thought you’d all be at each others’ throats about it! And instead, you’ve united against me!’ He burst into full laughter. ‘Your mother will be so proud.’


	19. A Bit About Scorpius

Harry finished laughing and then waved his wand casually, a motion that made the tea, scones, and even the squat little table vanish. (Dominique raised an eyebrow and she wondered absently if the room would be peeved at the unused teacups). 'And now,' said the Auror, 'about the Stone. You have to understand that it's a bit bothersome if these criminals in the Forest are looking for it.'

'I still don't see the trouble,' piped up Albus. 'What does it hurt to bring back some dead people?'

'Except maybe for inconveniencing the dead people themselves,' added Rose.

For a moment an expression of something awfully close to uncertainty hovered over the face of the famous/infamous Harry Potter. Then he said abruptly, 'Before we go any further – I'm sorry, Scorpius, but I have to ask this, seeing as it’s been bothering me some time now—’

‘Why are Albus and I friends?’ Scorpius asked solemnly. He stood out so strikingly against most of the others in the room, only Dominique’s hair matching his for paleness, and even hers was more honey than white.

James straightened his back. ‘Hey, Dad, that’s not totally fair.’

‘Oh, I think it is,’ responded Harry quietly. ‘You have to understand that I know his father well and―’

‘But he’s not his father!’ exclaimed Rose, speaking, for the third time that evening, despite her better judgement.

Harry glanced at her, then back at Malfoy. ‘No. He isn’t. But he has his loyalties too, just as we all do. Who do you support in Quidditch?’ he asked, and Dominique made a snort that clearly said, _honestly!_

‘Slytherin,’ answered Malfoy promptly but then, after a moment’s pause, added, ‘Gryffindor if Slytherin isn’t playing.’

Gryffindor’s Seeker beamed at him, and their Captain thumped him on the back in a matey manner.

Harry didn’t take any notice of their carryings-on. ‘You see, that’s just it,’ he said calmly. ‘First and foremost Slytherin. And it has to be the same with your father – I’m not criticising that, because I wouldn’t expect less of anyone’s son, in fact I’d be bothered if you didn’t put your family first but if your father’s interests conflict with those present…’

‘My father doesn’t have any interest in Hogwarts,’ said Scorpius with a voice lost somewhere between a snarl and a sigh. ‘He didn’t even want to send me here, but for my mother. He wanted me to go to Japan, but she won’t move back there and so – anyway – he doesn’t care what happens here so long as I’m not actually _in _Gryffindor, get good marks, and pass my NEWTS at the end.’

‘He doesn’t mind that your best friend is my son?’ asked Harry bluntly.

Scorpius finally smiled, slowly but surely, a dark light wakening in his eyes. ‘Sure he minds. But what can he do? Order that I have no friends at all?’

‘But the other Slytherins…?’

‘Dad!’ insisted James again, and Albus too was looking bothered, _distinctly _bothered, even if Scorpius just sat there with that mocking smile on his lips.

The blond gave them a look, then shrugged, and continued in a dry, hard voice, clearly indifferent to the reception it was receiving, ‘The other Slytherins ignore me, on a good day. You should know, Mr Potter, that my family, my Dad, we don’t belong anywhere, thanks to you. Your lot, your Order, all the people who had clean hands after the fall of the Dark Lord, they won’t share his company, not that he would stoop to theirs anyway. And his lot, the ones he grew up amongst, they wouldn’t touch us with a barge pole. Because of my grandparents. Turncoats in the middle of battle, Mr Potter, what do _you_ think would be made of them? You don’t imagine that all the Slytherins haven’t heard, each and every one of them, the story that you told so freely about the battle afterwards? That is was my own grandmother who declared you dead? That if she hadn’t lied…!’

Rose was staring at him. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him actually worked up about something. He met her gaze for a split second and then he shrugged coolly. ‘I don’t actually care either way. The point is, we’re outcasts because of you. Why do you think all my Dad’s business is overseas, in the Orient, in the Middle East? You really want to know how Albus and I became friends?’

James groaned; Albus put his hands over his face; Dominique and Rose looked curious; and Harry Potter nodded. ‘Yes please.’

Scorpius smiled like a boy enjoying the masochism of giving evidence against himself before the Wizengamot. ‘Early in second year,’ he said, ‘Greg – Goyle, you know – was picking on Al as usual. Using what we tend to call the “little cousin” to the Cruciatus.’ (Harry let out a strangled sound but Scorpius just kept talking). ‘Nothing unusual for Greg. I didn’t see until it was too late and I got in the way, so he thought it would be funny to try it on me too. I guess Al never realised that a Slytherin might torture another Slytherin. He was so astounded that he, well, Stunned Greg fair in the head and – and that’s actually pretty much it, really. Except that good old Greg was a bit more careful around us when we were together, after that.’ He didn’t bother discussing when they _weren’t _together; when he was alone in the Slytherin chambers.

Harry seemed to have forgotten how to talk.

‘It’s true, Dad,’ said James. ‘I saw it happen, and they’ve been as thick as thieves ever since. He’s a squirt, yes, but only as much as Al is – no offence, Al. I trust him, I don’t even mind him watching our Quidditch practise, you know, he never tells.’

‘Quidditch practice be damned!’ roared his father, having suddenly rediscovered his tongue. ‘You saw your twelve-year-old _BROTHER _BEING TORTURED WITH THE CRUCIATUS CURSE AND YOU NEVER TOLD ME?’

‘Not the _actual_ Cruciatus,’ corrected Scorpius mildly.

James went pale. ‘Well – well―’ he stammered.

‘YOU DIDN’T GET INVOLVED, YOU JUST WATCHED!?’

James stood up suddenly. ‘You don’t understand! It wasn’t like that at all. I only turned up at the end of it, and Albus seemed to have dealt well enough with Goyle, and he and Scorpius seemed to be busy making friends, and he’d never really had friends here, and I rather thought, you know, that if he’d never told me that he was bullied in the first place, then it was probably because he didn’t want me to know, was too proud to ask for help, and so he’d hardly appreciate me busting in and making a fuss about it after he’d already dealt with it, would he?’ The boy paused, and sat down again quickly.

Harry stared at his youngest son. ‘Speak.’

Albus shrugged. ‘He’s right. I’d have hated it.’ Then he glanced at James with a half-smile. ‘Thanks, I guess.’

Dominique rapped her best friend on the back of his head with her knuckles, as if he were a coconut she was checking for ripeness. ‘Some friend you are, not telling me that! _Now _it all comes clear!’

James grinned. ‘Wasn’t really my secret to tell. Let’s face it, _you_ didn’t tell me about Victoire and Teddy until after everyone else knew, did you?’

‘_What _do you understand?’ demanded Harry of his second-eldest niece, not having the slightest bit of interest in neither Victoire nor Teddy at that moment.

Dominique shrugged. ‘James’ vendetta against Goyle. I mean, he’s a brute and an idiot but he’d never actually bothered _us_, but in second year James suddenly starts hexing him rather than look at him. They’ve been fighting ever since. You know, like the detention we have, they were duelling, weren’t they? And look at last year – how did you think James broke his legs, then?’

It was James’ turn to slap Dominique on the back of the head and she bit her lip.

Harry passed a hand across his face, took his glasses off, polished them, and replaced them. ‘I was under the _impression_ that you had fallen down the stairs of the Astronomy tower, James.’

‘I did… with a little help from Goyle. Look, Dad, it wasn’t so tragic – well – apart from screwing up the Quidditch season…’

‘The _Quidditch season?_ You could have broken your neck! You know they can fix broken legs, young man, but when you’re dead you’re dead.’ He paused. ‘Which – and believe me, you and I aren’t done yet – brings me back to the Resurrection Stone. Clearly it’s common knowledge, so I’m going to presume that you lot aren’t to blame for how it became known to less desirable company. In fact, it’s our fault for having been too free with our own self-glorifying storytelling, since I’m guessing that’s how you found out in the first place?’

They all nodded except, of course, Scorpius.

‘I rather thought so.’ Harry sighed. ‘The problem isn’t the Stone so much as what will happen if someone decides to try and unite…’ he paused, and shook his head to himself. ‘I’m letting you keep the Cloak for the moment, James, but behave yourself with it and don’t lose it. It’s probably as good a place for it as any. And – stay away from the Forest, all of you. Understood?’

Rose opened her mouth to launch into further depth with her theories about Welsh and the Stone, but her Uncle shook his head with typical grown-up decisiveness. ‘Enough for tonight, Rosie.’  
The boys jumped up, clearly believing that they were escaping a further lecture. Harry put out his hand just for a moment. ‘As for you – Albus Severus, I’m disappointed that you didn’t tell me what was going on, but proud of how you’ve dealt with it. Scorpius... You have my trust, but I'll be watching you.'

Scorpius shrugged, as though to say, _you think I'd expect anything different?_

'As for you, James Sirius Potter…’ A small grin slipped onto Harry’s face. ‘_I’ll _be grounded for life if this so much as reaches your mother’s ears but – Goyle? Give him hell, son, give him hell…’


	20. Projects And The Passage of Time

Time passed at Hogwarts. Harry and Ron left the Castle without any of the other students having even realised that they were there in the first place. Charlie returned to teaching with only the most fervent of his admirers noticing that his nose was a little off centre (although, of course, the kind of girl who goes for dragon wranglers covered in scars and burn marks isn’t going to be put off by a crooked nose; they declared it had _character)_. Rose and James played their first Quidditch match – against Ravenclaw – and won. Scorpius and Albus finished their monitor duty in the library. And even Dominique and James came to the end of their detention with Professor Welsh which, it turned out, she actually handed over to Professor Flitwick instead and _he _set them and Goyle to the brain-deadening task of charming cobwebs out of obscure corners of the castle where nobody (including House Elves, apparently) ever went anyway. It seemed that, since that night in the Hospital Wing, Welsh wasn’t inclined to be in the same room with James and Dominique; even in class she ignored them stonily and, indeed, the only time they really spoke at all was the day when she set them their individual project, the one they were to do because they already knew how to cast a Patronus.

“Animagi,” she’d said.

James had been daydreaming about beating Slytherin in the Quidditch Cup and so he’d blinked at her and blurted out, very intelligently, “Eh?”

“Animagi,” Professor Welsh had repeated with a distasteful glance in his direction.

“Do you – uh – want a definition or what?” he’d asked and Dominique had kicked him beneath the table as the professor’s eyes glinted dangerously.

“Not at all, Mr Potter, although you’re welcome to give me one.”

“Animagi,” he responded promptly, with a smirk. “Witches or wizards who can turn themselves into animals. The Headmistress, for example does a cat, I’m told, although I’ve never seen it myself. I’m named after one,” he added proudly.

“After a cat?” the teacher inquired silkily.

He’d almost laughed then, but had – thanks to Dominique kicking him again – managed to restrain himself enough to explain, “No. After an animagi.”

Professor Welsh’s eyes had flickered from him to Dominique and then back again. “Indeed.”

“Oh yeah,” he'd enthused. “James Sirius Potter, that’s me, named after my Dad’s godfather. His animagus form was a dog, you know. Great big shaggy black thing. Illegal of course, because he was under age when he learnt, so it was never registered.”

Welsh’s eyes had closed for a moment; she'd seemed to be mentally steadying herself. But when she'd spoken it had been to drawl, “A ‘great big shaggy dog’ Mr Potter? I’m fascinated beyond belief.”

James had shrugged.

Welsh had given him a look at that point and thrown two piles of parchment down in front of them each, both covered in fine, dark handwriting that they supposed must be hers. “The skill of being an animagus is highly useful when it comes to both self-protection and self-defence and thus, of course, has a proper place in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Because you are both underage you will, naturally, only be learning the theory although, should you manage to surprise me and show some actual talent in the field then I might consider applying for a dispensation to the rule; you will, after all, both come of age before the school year is out, being December babies as you are.”

They’d both stared at her, frankly astonished.

“That’s our work? To become animagi?”

“In a nutshell, Miss Weasley? Yes. Of course, if you don’t think you can manage…?”

They’d grabbed the parchments and hurried off before the witch could change her mind, and all the way out of the room they'd felt her fathomless grey eyes on them, even as the excitement whirled through them at the prospect of their project. The little obsidian dog, who still stood watch on the shelf where Welsh had made him move with her wandless magic, had yapped almost crossly at them as they left the room and they'd rather hoped that neither it nor the professor were aware that they were still spying on her; they knew she was still walking the castle at odd hours.

But that had been then. Time passed and autumn started to take itself seriously. The leaves of the deciduous trees in the Forest and the school grounds shifted themselves from green to varying shades of golds and reds (trees, it was obvious, had, on the whole, been sorted into Gryffindor by some higher power), and the mornings became crisper and crisper until Rose found herself going out to Quidditch practice rugged up in a scarf and a beanie, and eventually used a spell to make her hair longer in a bid to keep the cold out.

Most importantly, they all _behaved _themselves.

Or perhaps it would be better to say… they were all that much more discreet.

*

  
“So...” mused Rose thoughtfully, brushing a strand of her hair back behind an ear. “If you were smart enough to do that kind of spellwork on a portkey then what would you―” She paused and put down the pile of notes that she was holding. “Are either of you actually _listening_?_” _she groused at her audience of two.

Albus nodded absently, passing his black stone from hand to hand as though he were practising to be Seeker. Scorpius smiled at her sideways, with slightly raised eyebrows, and observed, “You’ve changed your hair.”

“I’ve – what?” She stared at him.

“You’ve changed it, somehow. It’s longer.”

“Oh.” It was a very expressive _oh._ Albus muttered something semi-incomprehensible. Rose turned on him. “_What_ did you say?”

“I said,” he repeated crossly, “didn’t Uncle Ron tell you not to get too friendly with Mal? Cause Granddad Weasley’d never forgive you if you married a Pureblood?” He glared at her sourly, just _daring_ her to get annoyed. Albus was, frankly, a little put-out by just how much time they spent with Rose nowadays. Not that he disliked his cousin exactly but, well, he’d liked it better when it had been just him and Scorpius. Everything had changed. If Rose asked his best friend to jump, Mal just asked ‘how high?’ and it was bloody _irritating._

Even now Mal opened his mouth to say something, but he shut it quickly as Rose flushed scarlet. “Give me that!” she snapped, and snatched Albus’s rock from his hands. “Sodding _weeks _you’ve been fiddling with this and I’ve had it up to―” She’d raised her hand to throw the stone but paused suddenly, frozen, the same way that James had when he’d made the motion to throw the stone in the fire, all those weeks ago when he’d pulled it from the torn hem of Albus’ robes with all the rest of the debris from the Forest floor. And now Rose grew very silent and her blush drained away as she opened her hand and, for the first time, actually _looked_ at the stone_. A small black stone, smaller than a snitch, cracked slightly down the middle and, on its surface, scratched and damaged, a symbol that―_

“Oh _Merlin,_” she managed in a croak. “Where did you get this?” Since, of course, she’d been buried in a game of wizard’s chess with her friend Madeleine at the time of James’s ‘unearthing’ of it.

Albus shrugged. “If you’ll believe it, it was in my robes with a whole bunch of random crap that got in there when I was ambushed by Goyle in the…” He trailed off.

“In the Forbidden Forest?” she asked.

Al nodded, tongue-tied by her expression.

“What – what’s going on, Ro?” asked Scorpius.

Rose didn’t seem capable of talking, nor of letting the stone go. She held it as if it were a priceless gem and, with her other hand, jabbed her wand at her pile of notes until the specific piece of parchment that she was looking for came to light. It had a sketch on it that she’d painstakingly copied out from some heavy tome somewhere: a sketch of the Resurrection Stone, the third of the Hallows, the creation of the Peverell brothers.

All three of them craned their heads and stared at it, then stared at the stone, and it would have been almost comical if it weren’t so damned intense.

“No way…” hissed Albus, who felt slightly nauseous at the thought that he’d been carrying _that _in his pocket so carelessly all this time and using it like a worry bead.  
“But… but how come Al hasn’t been – you know – seeing dead people?” asked Scorpius.

Rose paused and thought. Then she said softly, her eyes meeting his over her hands and the Stone and her notes, “In Uncle Harry’s stories, he always says that he _concentrated_ really hard and turned it over three times to use it.” She paused again. “I wonder…”

“Don’t!” shouted Albus, and grabbed her wrist so tight that she flinched. “Don’t you remember? _Think_ about it, Rosie! He was also in possession of the other two Hallows at the time _and _was the rightful wielder. Don’t you remember what happened to the Headmaster Dumbledore? It _killed_ him!”

Rose went a ghostly colour and for a second Albus thought she was going to faint, or throw up, or something equally girly, but in the end she did neither. Instead she placed the Stone carefully into her special bag and then gathered up her notes that lay scattered on the ground in front of her. “Thank you, Al,” she whispered in a quiet voice and then stood up and fled back to the castle.

The boys stayed there, seated on the ground amongst the fallen leaves and the sticky-sweet smell of mushrooms and damp grass, watching her skirted figure as it moved away from them, startled for a few moments into silence. Then Scorpius managed, "Good thinking.”

And Al shook himself like someone just coming awake and muttered, “Yeah. Guess so.”**  
**


	21. A Proposition Is Put

If their fifth-year relatives were acting even stranger than usual, well, Dominique and James hadn’t really noticed. For a start, being over twelve months older meant that they automatically found just about everything the younger ones did to be at least somewhat strange. Besides, it wasn’t as though they had the time to dwell on it either way…

“This is bloody _hopeless!”_ yelled James and threw his wand down viciously.

Dominique gave him a look. “You do know that wands break, right? Unless you really fancy asking your Dad for a replacement or, worse, begging wandless-magic lessons from Welsh, I’d treat it a bit nicer if I were you.”

James stooped down and snatched his wand back up again, rolling his eyes, but checking its length despite himself. Dominique smirked. He rolled his eyes again, then gave in and grinned in an exasperated kind of way and muttered, “Oh, shut up already. It’s just that this is stupid. Even the theory is insane. You know, Dad once told me that it took Grandpa Potter and his gang _years _to learn how to become Animagi. And we’re supposed to do it as a class project while the others are tickling away at _Expecto Patronum?_ Okay, so admittedly that’s taking them longer than I thought it would but…” He half-shrugged and kicked, a little spitefully, in the direction of the pages, dark with Welsh’s fine, cramped handwriting, spread out before them on the floor where they sat. “We haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell at figuring this out by end of term, let alone by our exams,” he concluded.

Dominique shrugged. “You’re just tired. Maybe we should quit with the snooping at nights and try and get some sleep instead.”

He glared at her. “No way. Look, Meeks, she barely even speaks to us now if she can help it. Don’t you see, that must mean that we’re right and she’s up to something and _she knows that we know. _She probably _is _after the Stone like Rose believes; Merlin, she’s probably after all three of the Hallows. You know as well as I do that the wand is just sitting in that tomb out th—”

The blonde slammed her hand against his mouth and the force of it sent him flying backwards, off the cushions he’d been sitting on, and he lay there on the floor, a little stunned, staring up at her.

“Sorry,” she apologised quickly, and helped him back up. “I just don’t think you should _say _it. It’s bad enough that we know.”

“I wasn’t – oh, fine. But no-one can hear us here anyway, I made sure of that.”

It hadn’t taken James and Dominique very long at all to track down the Room of Requirement again after Uncle Harry’s visit. If anything, they were a little embarrassed that it hadn’t occurred to them before, and now they made great use of it for the vast majority of their Planning Of Things – as well as their Animagi practise. Not that the latter had to be done in secrecy, but it was simply easier without onlookers gawking at them, which they were admittedly inclined to do; it wasn’t as though the wizarding world were jam-packed with Animagi, was it?

James sighed. “Let’s start from the beginning then.”

His friend shuffled the papers, which were now quite dog-eared and somewhat tea-stained, back into order and then suggested, a little quietly, as though she already knew what his response would be, “Perhaps you would be better off with a smaller animal?”

Both of them had settled upon their Patronus animals. Despite himself, James found the idea of guardians quite appealing and then, your Patronus as your Animagus-form was a bit of a Potter family tradition, wasn’t it?

To her surprise, however, James didn’t answer directly but said instead, “Hey, Meeks…?”

She looked at him and waited.

“Well,” he said. “The thing is, have you noticed Welsh’s Patronus recently?”

The girl ran her wand back and forth across her fingertips thoughtfully. Of course she’d noticed it. The very fact that Welsh wandered around the castle at night, alone, with her Patronus for company, was baffling enough in itself – did she feel threatened by something? Was she lonely? Or just crazy? And wasn’t there something odd about mixing the ethereal shimmer of a Patronus with the Dark Arts anyway? And then, now…

“Yes,” admitted Dominique. “It – it’s changed, hasn’t it?”

He made one of his James-shruggy-noises, and grunted in agreement.

She leaned back into the cushions, and let her wand rest on her belly, hands moving in the air half above her and half before her; a kind of illustrating aid as she considered the matter out loud. “I mean, when we first saw Welsh’s Patronus, it was clearly a greyhound or something, like that little Egyptian statue of hers. But now… I’m not entire sure _what _it is now. Just bigger and kind of – hairy. It’s very weird.”

“Maybe it’s becoming a dragon?” he suggested with a smirk.

“James Sirius Potter, if you’re implying that she really does love Uncle Charlie and that that’s why it’s changing, I’ll flatten you. Besides, there’s no evidence that that always happens. And anyway – a hairy dragon? Really.”

“Just a thought,” he grinned, a little more furtively now. “You know, Uncle Charlie seemed to find your suggestion that he was bewitched pretty damn funny. Maybe they really do just like each other.”

Dominique looked annoyed. “Maybe. But that doesn’t explain the freaky magic she uses…” For, more often than not, they would see her head into her empty office at night time and start with the wailing. “And whatever the point of _that _is…?” She glanced at James.

James, however, was looking half-past her in a distracted way.

“Earth to James, are you listening?” she asked.

“Eh? Yeah, I just – you know the Yule Ball?”

They’d only been reminded just that morning that the Yule Ball would be taking place for the simple reason that someone thought it would be smart to honour James’s Dad – and because the Headmistress, apparently, liked a dance. _(“Yeah, great reason,”_ Albus had snickered at the breakfast table.)

Dominique shrugged. “What about it?”

“Ophelia asked me to go with her.”

“What a surprise.” Dominique chuckled. “I wish McGonagall had never mentioned the stupid thing in the first place. I’ve already been asked by _six _people. Six, can you imagine it? It’s so lame.”

James was studying a point just beyond her shoulder again. “And what’d you say?”

“Well, no, of course.” She shook her head, as though that brought the matter to a close, and asked, “So what colour dress will Ophelia be wearing, does she know? Because you’ll have to co-ordinate your dress robes one way or another or you’ll stupid in the photo albums forever and ever.”

He wrinkled up his eyebrows so that they met in a confused line above his nose. “I’m not going with Ophelia. I turned her down.”

“You did?”

Dominique just lay there amongst the cushions and stared at him, and had, James thought with a twinge of annoyance, the hide to look surprised. For a moment he felt like grabbing her shoulders and giving her a thorough shaking. Instead he let out a groan. “You are so infuriating. I’ve been telling you for _months _that that girl annoys the living daylights out of me. I don’t care if she worships the very ground I walk on – well – okay, so it was kinda nice for awhile, I’ll admit that, but it’s just annoying now. Especially at Quidditch. I might have to put her off the team – she let through _two _Quaffles in the last match because she was gaping in my direction instead of doing her job as Keeper and now, now that I’ve turned her down for the Ball she’ll probably be even worse.”

Dominique chuckled, then sat up and said, quite seriously, “I know she’s annoying, but her heart’s in the right spot.”

“Maybe, but I don’t want to go dancing with her, Meeks! I want to go with you!”

It had burst from him like a cannonball in an _awfully_ quiet war and for a second she just looked at him. The second became a minute and it was so quiet that he could hear the clock on the wall (it chimed on the hour so they wouldn’t miss classes) clucking loudly with a somehow irregular _tick-tick-tick-tock._

Finally she said, “What?”

He felt irritatingly flushed. “The Ball. I thought we could go together.”

“I’m your best friend,” she said in a dangerously quiet voice. “And your cousin.”

He shrugged. “So? Half you Weasleys are married to cousins and nobody cares. Well. Admittedly we all think that Daisy kid is a bit weird, but I still reckon it was the backfiring curse that did it, not the fact that her parents were—”

“Married?” Suddenly Dominique was standing up and staring at him somewhat wildly. “_Married_?”

He flushed pink now and hurried to his own feet. “I didn’t mean it like that – I meant – look, I just want to go to the Ball with you is all and—”

“I thought we were friends!”

“Eh? Merlin, of course we’re friends, we only have been since forever – but I don’t see why that doesn’t mean we can’t be – I mean – you know – damn it, Meeks, we can go to the _Ball _together.”

She didn’t appear to be listening anymore. “I won’t let you do it! I won’t! You – you can’t go and shift the goal posts like that, not after all these years, James Potter! Do you know how long – but I – just one of the lads – even encouraging Ophelia – and now – without so much as a warning―” She was completely incomprehensible by the time she shouted, “How could you?” and stormed out.

James watched her go, thoroughly stumped. He leant down and picked her wand; it had fallen to the ground when she’d jumped up.

“Well I’m not going with anyone else!” he yelled at her, but of course there was no way she could have heard him.


	22. A Second Proposition

“The problem is,” mused Rose later, having calmed down somewhat, her feet hocked up beneath her where she sat, on a bench in the courtyard, “twofold. Firstly, what do we do with the Stone now that we have it and, secondly, what about Samuel?”

Scorpius rested his head back against the wall beside her. He wasn’t that much fonder of her constant harping on about the ancient Prophet than Albus was but, unlike Albus, he rather preferred not making her cross. So he said, “I still don’t think that any one wizard has enough power to send a Portkey through time.”

Albus – who, now that the Stone had been confiscated by Rose, had taken to throwing a rather tatty tennis ball of the Muggle persuasion around – slammed the yellowish sphere against the wall directly between their heads and asked abruptly, “Do you think that Madeleine’d go to the Ball with me?”

“Well, there’s only one way to know,” responded Rose in a distracted way. “You’ll have to ask her, won’t you? Or I can ask her for you, if you’d rather.”

“Thanks Rosie,” Albus said in a relieved kind of voice. Then added, with a pointed look at his best friend, “Anyone you want me to ask for you?”

That, it seemed, was finally enough to rouse her from her Samuel-focused reverie, because she looked directly at him, then blushed awkwardly. “What? _Oh_. I guess I presumed…”

Albus grinned wolfishly and threw the tennis ball between her head and Scorpius’s again. This time Scorpius caught it before hit met the wall and flung it back at his friend’s head muttering, “Tosser.” Albus laughed and got up to fetch the ball from the other end of the courtyard (seeing as it had wildly missed its mark). The Slytherin ignored him best he could and glanced at Rose sideways. “Would you?”

“Gowithyou?” she asked rapidly, as though desperate to have the conversation done with before Albus came back.

Scorpius nodded.

She beamed. “Of course.”

“Oh. Great.”

Albus bounded back up, took one look at their grinning faces and snorted. “So now that _that’s_ dealt with I suppose we get to go back to the fascinating mystery of clever old Samuel and his miraculously time-defying manuscript of doom—”

“THAT’S IT!” Rose let out a screech and jumped up, her notes scattering every which where, and flung her arms around her cousin, squeezing him until his eye grew wide and distinctly panicked-looking. “You _GENIUS!”_

Albus pushed her off him as though worried he might catch something, besides, it had hurt his ribs, and demanded, “What the hell are you ON, Rose?”

She did a little jig. “The manuscript! Scorpius, you’re a genius too – of course it would be difficult to send a Portkey through time… _unless _you did it incredibly _slowly_. What if the _manuscript _is the Portkey? What if it’s set up to go off at some specific time?”

Malfoy and Albus stared at each other, then back at the beaming girl.

Albus scratched his forehead. “Rosie… How could that work? Even if – and it’s a massive if –that wereplausible, let alone possible – how would the fellow have known when to set it for? How would he know when the Stone and a willing wizard _and_ the manuscript were all in the one place, eh?”

“He was a _prophet_, Albus!” she cried gleefully. “A prophet! He saw things, saw the future! It’s all about Divination! Oh, I’ve got to find Dominique!” And she ran off.

Scorpius gathered her notes up for her and sighed.

Albus slapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, at least she said yes to the Ball.”

The blond raised his eyes in a long-suffering way towards the sky. “Sure. But at this rate we’ll be in the ancient Near East by Christmas…”

They looked at each other again, then laughed and decided that, all things considered, there was no point in heading after Rose. In fact, it made much more sense to head towards the nearest entrance to the kitchens instead. Which was exactly what they did.

*

In their absence, the courtyard was breathlessly still, nothing but a curl of wind against scatterings of leaves on cobblestones. In the distance rang out children’s voices, but that particular part of the grounds seemed to have been left deserted for the day, but for a small robin who took flight amongst a particularly hefty gust of russet leaves – and the dark figure of Professor Welsh stepping from the shadows of the wall…

*

Rose’s footsteps pounded up the stairs to the Gryffindor common room and she flung herself through the door with a breathless “Plum pudding!” even as the Fat Lady titched in disapproval. A quick survey of the common room told her that her cousin wasn’t there, so she made a bee-line towards Madeleine, who was deep in a game of checkers with Miranda. “Have you seen Dominique?” Rose asked them.

  
Miranda shook her head, while Madeleine simply pointed upwards to the dorms.

“Thanks,” Rose gushed, and then hurried towards those stairs too, only adding as an afterthought, “By the way, Maddy, Albus wants to go to the Ball with you, if you’d like.” But she didn’t wait around to hear her friend’s answer.

Up the stairs, up and around. First-years’ room, second-years’, third, fourth, fifth, and then the door of the sixth-year girls’ dorm, almost at the top of the tower. Rose knocked loudly, heard the sound of rustling from within, and then her cousin answered, in a muffled way, “What?”

“Is only me,” answered Rose excitedly, and a few moments later Dominique opened the door and gazed out at her.

A little bit of Rose’s enthusiasm ebbed away as she took in the sight of the older girl. The part-Veela had reddish eyes and, from her hair, it was obvious that she’d been laying in bed. She had a red nose too, and was holding a fistful of tissues. All of which was deeply unnerving.

“Um – are you okay?” asked Rose.

Dominique shrugged and stepped aside to let her into the room.

The dorm was empty except for her cousin and they sat down on Dominique’s bed, Rose pretending to be occupied as the blonde finished blowing her nose loudly and then wiped her eyes. Finally Dominique said, “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just – James asked me to the Yule Ball.”

Rose kept her face carefully neutral, since clearly there was some catch here that she couldn’t see. “Ah, okay.”

Dominique didn’t appear to hear her anyway. “I don’t know where he gets off doing a thing like that. Six years now we’ve been best friends, ever since he went off his brain at that girl, on the Hogwarts Express, for putting a hex on my hair and went to find Victoire to have her remove it. Oh, it’s not as though we hadn’t already been friends but, you know, not _especially_, and our families are all so damned big that when we get together at Christmas you can’t actually meet everyone and… well you already know that and so…” She sniffled.

Rose pulled another tissue from the box near the pillow and handed it to her.

“…and now, after six years of being best friends, he goes and asks me to the Ball as if I were a _girl._”

Rose couldn’t help her perplexity. “But you _are _a girl. And… I thought you’d be pleased to go with him. Better than most of the boys in your year, who’d you rather go with, Goyle?”

Dominique snorted into laughter, which had been Rose’s aim. “Oh, what a thought. Scary thing is, I think he’d say yes if I asked him.” She shuddered at the thought.

Rose shrugged. “Look, I’m obviously just stupid, you’re going to have to explain to me what the problem is.”

Dominique rubbed the heel of her hand against her cheek. “Oh, don’t you see… James Potter is probably my favourite person in the world, Rosie. He’s just about perfect, well, he’s a perfect idiot too, but you know what I mean and – well – I don’t know what to do if he changes the rules. I wouldn’t mind going with him if it were just because he had no-one else to go with or something, as a laugh, but – he wasn’t laughing when he asked me – he was – not laughing at all. And what if, what if he changes the rules and I can’t play the game right? We work as friends. What if we don’t work as more than that? And what if afterwards we can’t be friends anymore and then it’ll be ruined, Rosie?

Rose stared at her in shock as she started crying, quite silently, again. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Dominique cry before. Meeks and her siblings, they were tough, look at Victoire, off in the Middle East doing whatever it was she was doing, and then… She crawled over the bed towards her and gave her a hug and said, in a small marvelling voice, “You really – you really _like_ him, don’t you? You… you have a thing for _James?_”

And Dominique burst into damp laughter again, nodded, and then wiped her nose on her hand and groaned, “Oh, damn this to hell and back.”

Rose patted her helplessly on the back and decided that this probably wasn’t the best time to be asking about Divination…


	23. Uncle Charlie's Advice

When in doubt, Harry Potter had always told his children, ask your older brother.

Nice advice, really, very trusting and all that.

But whom do you turn to if you _are _the older brother?

After rather a lot of stomping and grumbling in the Room of Requirement, James had finally decided upon Uncle Charlie. After all, he _was_ his favourite uncle – he felt less like a professor than Neville did – and he’d obviously had a whole lot more experience in this particular area than, say, Hagrid.

Not to mention, he was also better at keeping quiet about stuff.

It was a Saturday, and so James wasn’t exactly sure where to find his uncle, but he figured that he’d try Hogwarts’ small menagerie first. As it turned out, though, he actually ran into him as he was leaving the castle and his uncle was coming out. _Literally _run into him.

“Oi, watch it, son,” his uncle had exclaimed, then realised who it was that he’d almost bowled over, and added, “Where’re you roaring off to with such a long face?”

James fidgeted. “I was looking for you, actually.”

“Ah, well, unfortunately I’m in a bit of a—”

“It’s okay,” rushed his nephew. “Doesn’t matter.”

Charlie gave him a scrutinising look and put his hand out to catch the boy’s shoulder before he could leave. “Changed my mind. What I was doing can wait. Let’s go find us some place to talk minus waggling ears, and you can tell me what the matter is.”

They found themselves a spot out on a pile of rocks overlooking the lake. It was getting colder every day and the leaves were growing sparse on the trees that fringed the water’s edge. James was glad that he’d grabbed his cloak on the way out, and now he pulled it around him tighter; in doing so he remembered that he had two wands in his pocket instead of the usual one. He pulled Dominique’s out and turned it over his his hand. It felt familiar, as though it might work for him just fine, but he didn’t want to try it, unwilling to commit that kind of invasion into his best friend's personal space. And also unwilling to be proven wrong.

Charlie glanced down at the wand, and raised an eyebrow. “That’s not yours, is it?”

“No. It’s Meek’s. She – she dropped it.”

Charlie’s other eyebrow joined the one near his hairline.

Before he could say anything, James asked abruptly, “Where were you going when I ran into you?”

His uncle smiled and answered, without even the heartbeat of a pause, “To see Remy. But she isn’t expecting me, so it’s not as though I’m going to be late for something. Was a… spontaneous decision on my behalf.”

“You were going to ask her to the Yule Ball,” said James, and it was a statement, not a question.

A shadow of a smile flirted with Charlie’s mouth, though he seemed unwilling to give it free reign, and the older man asked, “How’d you guess? Am I that obvious?”

James shifted restlessly, feeling the rock dig in at him where he sat not _quite_ comfortably. “Well. A bit. But, erm, it's just… everyone’s asking everyone at the moment. And, you know, Meeks still thinks she’s bewitched you.”

“Who? Remy? Look, James, I suppose it’s more that at my age I’m kinda happy to let some of the usual niceties slide. I like the witch, and that’s all I need to know, so why beat around the bush about it?” He paused, glanced at his nephew sideways, taking in the crumpled state of the teenager’s brow, and added gently, “Two more years and I’ll be fifty. Fifty! Can you imagine that?”

James shook his head; he honestly found it difficult to grasp – in some ways Charlie seemed younger than his other uncles.

Charlie grinned. “Decent of you. Look, I know you and Dominique, and Rose for that matter, and probably half the rest of the school, have a whole hornet’s nest of slightly whacky theories about Professor Welsh. Does it make any difference if I tell you, wizard to wizard, that she’s got her heart in the right place and that she’s actually quite warm if you can manage to get to know her?”

James looked doubtful.

His uncle shrugged. “She’s had a hard life, you know. Her mother was in London when Voldemort first rose to power. She was working as an intern in the Ministry, liasoning between them and the wizards who were falsely accused of Dark Arts, mostly immigrants from other countries whose neighbours didn’t quite _get _what it was they were up to. She fell pregnant, with Remy, you know, and then, in November – the November when Voldemort vanished because of your old man – she high-tailed it back to New Zealand like all the hounds of hell were chasing her.”

James studied Dominique’s wand intently, glinting in the pale sun. “So Welsh’s father was a Death Eater?” he surmised.

Charlie sighed. “She won’t tell me. She says she doesn’t know, just that she’s here trying to find out – but then, you heard at least part of that conversation, didn’t you?” His nephew squirmed slightly, but Charlie didn’t seem to notice, musing almost-absently, “Sometimes I think she _does_ know, but just won’t tell me. Who could be so terrible that she’d be here to rummage around about it but not share… I wonder…”

“Maybe it was Voldemort.” The words slipped out before James could stop them, and his uncle turned on him with sudden fierceness.

“Oh, don’t even _go_ there, son. Firstly, that’s the last thing I need to be hearing all over the school – and, for that matter, the only person you’re to tell any of this to is Dominique, and _that’s _only because I know you will anyway. And secondly, I can _assure _you that if Lord Voldemort had had a child his followers would have known about it, and so would he. They’d have hunted it down and raised it up as his heir, and travelling to New Zealand wouldn’t have been even the vaguest obstacle to them.”

James looked slightly abashed, an expression that didn’t cross his face all that often. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Charlie shrugged, suddenly relaxed again. “Yeah, happens to the best of us.”

The pair remained silent for a while, just watching the sun splash colour out across the lake and the grass that rolled down the slope between them and the shore, swaying in the evening breeze. There was something almost hypnotic about the way the sun-stained strands of green moved. Finally, Charlie asked, “So… what did you want to talk to me about?”

James fumbled with the wand. “Um, yeah, you see, it’s—” He found himself flailing for words in the most ineffectual way.

Charlie sighed. “You asked her to the Ball, am I right?”

James Potter sat up straight as a pin and stared at his uncle, more startled than if the man had correctly predicted who’d be winner of the Quidditch Cup. “How did you—?”

“How did I know? Because the only reason I could imagine Dominique Weasley actually dropping her wand and _leaving _it dropped is if you said something that completely and utterly threw her out of orbit.” Charlie paused, and actually had the hide to chuckle (James glared at him). “Anything else she’d just punch out of the way and then pick the wand back up again. And so… James, _tell_ me you didn’t ask her because she was your last resort?”

“What?” James spluttered, highly offended. “Of course not! Both of us have had offers – blimey, she’s had _dozens_ – but – but... I just want to go with her, is all.” For a second he looked mortified by the confession, but then he bit the bullet and shrugged; it was the truth, after all, and James Sirius Potter was no coward.

Charlie’s eyes smiled, the corners wrinkling up. “And did you say it in that tone?” he asked softly.

“What’d you mean?”

“As though you’d just realised that you were in love with her?” asked the dragon handler bluntly.

James blinked. “I – I – that’s what it sounds like?”

Charlie thumped him on the back in a matey way. “Seems like we’re both pretty obvious, James. Of course, I’m not surprised. Maybe you don’t know, but her mother’s had you down as her next son-in-law since you started at Hogwarts. _The middle of three sons-in-laws_, she always says, now that Louis is, well, ah, the way Louis is.”

Charlie’s eyes were actually bloody _twinkling. _James grow redder and redder, and muttered then gruffly, “Bit early to be marrying us off, innit? Anyway. She went off her brain and shouted a bunch of stuff that I couldn’t hardly make heads or tails of, and stomped out.”

“Did she actually say no?”

“I—” James paused, and scratched his ear. “I don’t _think _so but, like I said, it was kind of hard to follow.”

“Witches mostly are, son. But if she didn’t actually say no, then your offer’s still open, isn’t it?” Charlie stood up and stretched, long limbs twisting muscles in the setting sun. “Meanwhile, I’m off to go make an offer of my own.” He grinned at James, and helped him up with a rough-worn hand, adding thoughtfully, “Consider it this way. You’ve been best friends for, what, five years? Six years?”

“_Forever_,” answered James fervently, and didn’t even care, right at that moment, if it made him sound like a soppy girl.

“Hmm. Exactly. So maybe she’s just a bit worried that that could get lost along the way to the Ball. Have a think on that. And – take my advice – let her make the next move. She’s not a girl that’ll appreciate being babied.” And he headed towards the castle.

“Good luck with Professor Welsh,” James called after him, and realised that he meant it.

Charlie just grinned.


	24. Ill-Considered

“And so when I _finally _got her to stop crying,” continued Rose, “we went for a walk, and after that we raided the kitchen for apple dumplings, and _then, _and only then, was I finally able to ask her about the problem of prophecy.”

“And?” prompted Scorpius.

Rose groaned. “And _nothing_. Apparently she still denies that that prophecy she made last term was even a real one, and she says she's only taking NEWTS in Divination because it looked like a walkover and you can laze around on cushions practically every lesson… Which means, all that time, and I learnt nothing useful – well – except that she’s in love with James, but that’s not much use to anyone.”

Albus had already been grinning – he was in an unprecedented good mood because Madeleine had said yes to going to the Ball with him – and now his grin turned into a right smirk. “I dunno,” he said. “I’m sure I could find some use for it. What about blackmail?”

Rose smacked him on the back of the head, hard, and hissed, “You’re not to tell a living soul, nor,” she added as his eyes flicked across towards Moaning Myrtle, who sat sobbing noisily to herself on a distant row of sinks, “a dead soul either...”

(The malfunctioning girls’ bathroom had been a stroke of brilliancy on Rose’s behalf. Of course, it featured loudly enough in the wild tales her Dad told her and Hugo about his time at Hogwarts so, although she’d never been in it previous to this year, it hadn’t taken very long to find it given what she knew. That, and the fact that someone had boarded it up rather conspicuously, a small fact she hadn’t let get in her way. Albus, of course, had pulled a face, but Rose had declared that it could hardly be considered much of a bathroom anymore since it was out of bounds and unused, let alone a specifically _girls’_ bathroom.

“And the fact is, we need somewhere we can _all _talk: it’s getting too cold to be out in the grounds all the time, and Scorp can’t come into the Gryffindor rooms, can he? And I can hardly take the text to the library…”

Albus had muttered but given in.)

Now she and her cousin sat on a rug she’d scavenged from somewhere - it was red and gold, making it pretty easy to guess where - and Scorpius was walking around the sinks in the middle of the room, studying them with a curious expression. “This is really the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets?” he asked.

Before Rose could complain about him not concentrating on what she was saying, or even answer his question, the little sobbing ghost had looked up, zipped over towards the blond, and whispered in a dramatically hiccupped-syrup voice, “Oooooh, yes. It’s the entrance all right. Not that it’s been used in oh-so-many-years, never since that dreadful Battle, made a real mess that did, and then they went and boarded up my bathroom they did, they _diiiiiiiid!”_ She let out a whiny wailing sob and then zoomed around to get back in front of Scorpius, who had endeavoured to move away a little. “So like your father you are, and you,” she added with a tinkly little laugh in Albus' direction, “Oh, you’re just like _your _father.” She winked at him significantly, then smirked even more significantly at Scorpius, before turning to look at Rose intently. The living girl gave the dead girl a raised-eyebrows-don't-smirk-at-my-Scorpi

us kind of look, and Myrtle flounced off to sob in her toilet again, apparently unable, or just unwilling, to draw great parallels between Rose's appearance and that of her mother.

“Er, _right,”_ said Rose in a slightly amused voice. “And after that little interlude… what was I saying?”

“Um – Dominique, James, in love, blackmail forbidden,” summed up Albus.

Myrtle snuffled noisily.

Rose grinned. “Yeah. Anyway, she knew nothing about anything when it came to prophecy, what makes it work, etc, etc, etc… Hmmm, maybe the manuscript will just become a Portkey at the right time and that’s all there is to it." She pulled it out of her bag and, as usual, it glowed purpleish in the bathroom’s white light. “I wonder who it chooses to go back and speak the prophecy.”

Albus rolled his eyes. “I still say you’re crazy. It’s all in your head. How you can draw so much ‘fact’” (his fingers made little apostrophes in the air) “from one story, one thing mentioned in a story, is beyond me. What if it were made up? Or some other stone, or—”

Rose wasn’t listening. “What if I took the protective spell off it?” she mused.

“No, Rose, don’t!” shouted Scorpius with immediate understanding, and lurched towards her, but it was too late. Her wand touched the manuscript even as he hit her in something terribly akin to a rugby tackle, the manuscript flashing brilliantly, and the pair of them vanished.  
The swear words that Albus Severus Potter sent flying around the haunted girls’ bathroom in a panic were enough to make even Moaning Myrtle blush a whiter shade of pale.

*

_First there was blue._

_Then there was the feel of Scorpius arms around her._

_And the awareness that the manuscript beneath her touch was crumbling into a thousand fragments._

_The panicked thought, __how do we know when to let go?_

_Then the realisation that it didn’t matter, because the manuscript was already gone, disintegrated and blown away._

_Next, the strong, sharp tang of thick dust, a roar like thunder, and Rose Weasley slammed against the unforgiving ground with a nasty crunch. Scorpius, who’d been born with that Malfoy-Black grace in his veins, landed just a fraction more gracefully, but all that did was allow him a second of wide-eyed fear before the army of screaming, roaring men passed right over the top of them._

_Then the darkness and a dull, aching oblivion._


	25. The Headmasters Consult

Professor McGonagall had a look on her face that hung somewhere between startled and dumbfounded. “That— Mr Potter, that has to be the most implausible story I have heard in all my years as a teacher, and I can assure you that they number no small sum!” Then she paused, and glared sternly at a certain ghost.

(The large, circular office, that belonged to the Headmistress, was quite unusually full of people, and the last thing they needed was Moaning Myrtle whizzing in amongst them and singing out in a gleeful voice, _“Ooooh, but it’s true! It’s true! I saw it, I did, right before my own eyes…!”_ She seemed quite out of herself with delight.)

Professor Welsh didn’t even glance in the little ghost’s direction, merely pointed her dog’s leg bone outwards in an abrupt thrust, muttered something and, with a hissy-bang, Myrtle had quite frozen in mid-space. For a second all eyes turned towards her, even James’, and _he _was in the unique position of finding Welsh’s wand literally millimetres from his own nose. It had, he realised, a myriad of little carvings upon it, and he swayed a little backwards on his heels to get away from its touch. But that was only for a split second and then, like the spectators of a Quidditch match, all eyes moved as one back to where the Headmistress stood between her desk, starting down at one very terrified-looking Albus Severus Potter.

His two namesakes, who were peering down at him with very different expressions on their faces from either side of Minerva’s own portrait, were watching just as intently as everyone else in the room.

“If I may?” inquired Dumbledore in a soft voice.

“Oh, by all means!” exclaimed Minerva, rubbing her forehead, and then dropped down into her chair.

“Albus, my dear boy,” began the ex-headmaster in a friendly tone. “Firstly let me express what a pleasure and an honour it is to meet someone unfortunate enough to have been lumbered with the same name as me. I cannot for the life of me imagine what got into your father on the night you were born, let alone your mother, who I’d always imagined was such a sensible young witch, if a little on the wild side with the lads.”

There was a sort of embarrassed smile that moved throughout the crowd, the way it does when everyone is on tenterhooks and someone starts waffling about utterly inappropriate nonsense.

“Oh, _please_,” snapped Severus Snape from the left. “Enough of the nostalgic codswollop, old man. I know it was always your speciality but I’m sure you can have a tender and moving heart to heart some other time. Boy!” he added in a shout, and the young Albus, who had been staring at his elderly painted namesake with an open mouth, snapped his eyes towards the sallow-faced hook-nosed Headmaster.

“Yessir?” he managed.

Snape smiled. “Well, well,well. Manners. I _am _surprised, considering the bloodline. Now. Tell me, leaving out all the talk of dead prophets, and manuscripts as Port-Keys, if you please – did Miss Weasley have the Resurrection Stone on her when she vanished?”

There was a collective breath of air-gasped-in as the small crowd paused – Charlie, James, Dominique and McGonagall – except for Welsh, who just stiffened, and watched with a beady glare eerily similar to that of the portrait.

“Yes, that’s what I said," answered Albus quickly. "She had her bag – she _always _had her bag, probably sleeps with it for all I know, and—”

“Silence!” snapped Snape, and exchanged a glance with Dumbledore, completely ignoring the portrait of Minerva in the middle, who just sighed and stared upwards towards the domed ceiling with an oddly glassy look, as though she were perfectly used to being skipped over by the two men.

The flesh-and-blood Minerva, on the other hand, broke in emphatically. “Enough of the cloak-and-dagger, professors. Is it, or is it not, possible to have a Port-Key primed and left hanging through the ages to suck back into the past the first person stupid enough to touch it?”

“Don’t call Rose st—” began all three children in a chaos of words, but now both Snape and Welsh ordered silence at the same time and, with an almost reflexive nervous glance at the frozen Moaning Myrtle, the students obeyed.

There was a moment of further silence, then finally Dumbledore nodded slowly. “Implausible, yes… impossible, no. However – and this is a rather _large_ however – the chance that the children have actually arrived in the time and place where Miss Weasley’s theory proposed are meagre beyond belief. Samuel…” Dumbledore paused. “Merlin wrote something about Samuel, didn’t he? I suppose the similarities are striking. Both wizards were consults to rather stupid kings, after all,” he added, with a chuckle to himself.

Snape looked dour; clearly being a portrait hadn’t improved his mood any. “The probability is _beyond _meagre. The idea that there was a wizard somewhere in the past with the power, determination, and divination skills to set up a stupid stunt like this – and _then_ would choose Miss Weasley and Mr Malfoy to summon him… I’m sorry, but they’re the last people I would have chosen.”

McGonagall sighed and made a waving motion with her hand, as though to express that the conversation had gone on long enough and was nevertheless getting nowhere. “Professor Weasley, if you’d be so good as to inform the other teachers of what has happened, and the organise a search of the grounds – request Pomona to help you – and see that Flitwick takes over the castle. There’s a change they haven't gone so far at all, but merely find themselves jammed between bathrooms or the like.”

“I don’t think—” Charlie glanced at Welsh.

The New Zealander shook her head slightly. “Go.”

Charlie shared a worried glance with his niece and nephews, then hurried off.

“Mr Potter – the _younger_ Mr Potter – if you would be so kind as to head off the Hospital Wing and get yourself a cup of cocoa and a sedating potion, it would be much appreciated.”

Albus frowned. “But I—"

“No buts, Mr Potter,” the Headmistress insisted with a slight trill to her voice. “I’ll deal with you later. Off you go now.”

Frowning, and looking so tired that he was threatening to cry, the fourteen year-old nevertheless stormed out of the room with a protesting bang of the door.

James and Dominique, despite the fact that they hadn’t actually spoken to one another since the scene in the Room of Requirement, and had been ordered to the Headmistress’ office in the middle of a sullen moment in the common room where they’d been studiously avoiding one another’s gaze after James had silently handed the girl her wand back, now stepped automatically closer to one another as the Headmistress’ gaze turned upon them.

Only to realise that she was looking beyond them, at Professor Welsh.

The Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher made a small, soft noise and then stepped up towards the Headmistress as though she knew something was expected; knew something that the children did not.

“You have been doing as I asked?” asked Minerva softly.

Welsh frowned. “Of course. Watch the brats; I’ve been watching them. Open their minds to different magics; I was planning on wandless magic next term, they’ve all almost mastered their guardians already.” Her accent was thick and curly at the edges, parts of the words going missing.

James and Dominique stepped closer. What was going on? There was an air of – there was an air of _something not quite right_.

“Your father would have been proud of you, Andromeda,” murmured Professor McGonagall, and Welsh nodded curtly, her back stiff and straight and—

James's stomach lurched.

_She was scared. She was absolutely terrified._

She was also edging imperceptibly closer between the children and the Headmistress, as though to—

“DOWN!!” screamed the New Zealander, and James and Dominique didn’t think, just flung themselves to the floor, but it didn’t stop them seeing what happened next, didn’t stop the sight of Professor McGonagall, their beloved Headmistress, crumbling away like wax melting on a candle, to reveal beneath her a very different woman indeed, a woman whose face they both knew even though they had been born years after she was supposedly dead; dead at the hands of their own grandmother.

_The face of Bellatrix Lestrange. _

It mightn’t have even been so bad if at that moment she hadn’t let out a laugh of pure cold evil, pointed her wand at Welsh and screamed, “AVADA KEDAVRA!  
**  
**


	26. More Than A Little Is Revealed

The honey-skinned woman leapt to the side with a shriek of rage, missing the curse, and her bone wand pointing, oddly enough, at Moaning Myrtle. With a bang the ghost girl became mobile again, but Welsh cut through Myrtle's automatic whinging with a shrieked, “TELL PEEVES!”

_“Tell Peeves?” _repeated Bellatrix with so much disbelief that she actually stopped laughing and stared at the place on the wall where, after having taken in the scene before her, a frightened-looking Myrtle had vanished. _“Tell Peeves? _What kind of witch makes _Tell Peeves_ her famous last words?”

Welsh was on her feet again, and her face was blazing with a fury that it almost hurt to look upon; James and Dominique both had their wands drawn now and they moved to stand too, but a wave of Welsh’s hand made them temporarily immobile. The DADA professor didn’t even glance at them, just straightened her shoulders and glared at Bellatrix. “The kind of witch who wants nothing more than vengeance, bitch!” she spat in a loud voice, clear even through the accent. “Because I lied to you just as much as you lied to me! As if Severus Snape could be my sire like I’d told you! What deceptions and fairy tales! And even if he were, do you think I didn’t know that he turned in the end? Even he – who hasn’t heard the story? But no, everyone turned on your precious Voldemort in the end, didn’t they? Even you, Bellatrix Lestrange! How did you do it? I’ve been wanting to ask you all these weeks now… When did you take on the glamour? When did you switch appearances? When did you take the form of Minerva McGonagall and place her beneath the _Imperious_ curse? My bet you must be good at those, Bellatrix. I never met the woman but I’ve heard of her – the agony she must have felt at the end there, to be fighting her own people in that last Battle, to die at the hands of a companion of old… I’ve been wanting so very long to ask you when you made that switch but, of course, the poor, humble, bastard daughter of Severus Snape couldn’t do such a thing, could she? But the bastard daughter of Sirius Black can, you _whore_. When did you make the change? Tell me, so I can tell the others, and then let me watch you die beneath my hand, die for killing my father before I ever had a chance to meet him! Didn’t my name give it away? Proud Black family name, after all! But you wouldn’t think of that, would you? So obvious; the name of your very own sister. Blinded by your own prejudice, _Aunt_.”

Bellatrix let out a scream of rage. “What do I care whose whelp you are, you _fool?!_ You’re still mine, still bound by the curses that hold you so close to the dark and foul-smelling earth. Even closer now than I had thought, it would seem! If you kill me you’ll die, and you know it, for who else can release you from the trap you find yourself in?”

“You think I _care?”_ inquired Andromeda Welsh with a calm, calm voice. “Avad—”

But at that moment James shook off the spell she had placed upon him, and let out a roar of his own, tackling the DADA professor’s legs and sending her tumbling to the ground. Her spell, half-spoken, went flying from her white wand, miscarried and spinning around, almost hitting James square in the face, and ricocheting off paintings, shattering the glass and sending the ex-headmasters – who, up to this point, had been watching open-mouthed – scurrying out of sight.

“You stupid boy—” Welsh began but James just muttered _thank me later_ before throwing himself floorwards beside her, even as a massive body slammed in through the window and the half-breed manticore-dragon let out a scream that made even Bellatrix pale. At the same time Dominique stood up and shouted, “_Expelliarmus!”_ and the Dark witch’s wand flew out of her hand and into the air in a neat arc, where James, on the ground, snatched it before the manticore-creature could crush a foot down on it and then the boy rolled, dragging an irate-looking Professor Welsh with him and trying to avoid thinking about the fact (and honestly this was neither the time nor the place) that he was clutching a teacher to him in a bear-like embrace.

“Just let me—” shouted said teacher but, at that point, Bellatrix vanished out the window in the hole that the beast had made upon its entry. Dominique let out a yell as it turned on her, screamed, “_Stupefy! Stupefy!”_ at it until it landed, with a crack and a splintering of wood, against the Headmistress’ desk, which broke clean in two, and, with a streak of blonde-white hair, the part-Veela positively sped to the window and stared out. “Merlin’s spitballs!” she gasped, and pointed out, to Professor Welsh, who had finally thrust James bodily from her, the figure of Bellatrix Lestrange flying away, wandless but unscathed, into the night sky.

“What a surprise,” muttered the older woman. “I suppose these things will rub off on your sycophants if you let them hang around you long enough.”

At that moment – always at that moment, when the chaos has passed and left sheer wilful mess in its place – the door slammed open and Charlie ran back in, followed by a gaggle of fellow professors. Without nary a glance to the left nor the right he pushed his way through the splintered wood to Welsh, seized her shoulders in his rough hands, breathed, “Woman you’re a splendid specimen”, and kissed her more than a little soundly.

Professor Welsh spluttered, leant in against him just a _fraction, _and then pushed him away brusquely, though her brown skin had darkened a little and there seemed to be an awfully good imitation of a smile lurking around those grey eyes of hers. She ran a hand back across her hair, shook herself slightly, and then pointed angrily at the half-breed beast still lying upon the floor, though it was starting to stir feebly already. “Is _that _your idea of a good plan, Charlie Weasley?” she demanded.

Charlie noticed the creature, apparently for the first time, and actually almost took a step backwards, though he still hadn’t released his hold on one of her shoulders, his fingers gentle but possessive upon her. With his other hand he scratched his chin. “Merlin, she’s even uglier in the proper light,” he mused, then shook his vehemently. “Most certainly not _my _idea, Remy. I had an owl from Thaddeus and Jake just this morning, assuring me that they’d settled her in Upper Croatia. Damned thing must have spent all day flying back. Probably thinks it belongs here now…” He paused. “I bet that twit of a Hagrid fed it chocolate peanuts, I’ll bet you anything you like.”

It was around that point that a new figure appeared at the doorway, passed quite calmly through the staring teachers, and asked in a most pleasant voice, “I’m not going to want to hear what you’ve got to tell me, am I?”

“DAD!” bellowed James, and the next second was wrapped most unashamedly in his father’s strong arms. “Eh, Dad!”


	27. Tea And Explanations

Outside, it had started to rain.

Welsh, who seemed rather oddly to have taken control in the absence of a Headmistress – perhaps for the simple reason that she was the only staff member who had never been sorted into a Hogwarts House, which saved on bickering – sent for Filch and Hagrid to do something about the broken window and the dragicore, respectively – and then the rest of them traipsed, quite soberly, down to the large inter-house staff room where she lit a fire in the grate, made a large, steaming pot of tea and sufficient cups for all materialise on the table, and even pretended to look the other way when James and Dominique entered the room, each student wrapped in one of Harry’s inordinately secure arms, and Harry himself wrapped in a heavy cloak that concealed him from head to foot and only showed but the shadow of his profile beneath.

For a short while, then, there was nothing but the comforting sound of rain, and pouring tea, and people drinking, a fact for which the teenagers were both deeply grateful, and also slightly frustrated by. How on all the world’s plausibility levels could the adults be sitting here having a tea-party when they’d just discovered that Professor McGonagall was actually dead, and had been so for almost twenty-three years; that Voldemort’s ex-Lieutenant had done a switcheroo just before his defeat and was now floating around somewhere, bat-like, in the night sky; that Professor Welsh wasn’t even remotely whom she seemed to be; let alone the fact, oddly forgettable in light of recent events, that Rose and Scorpius had vanished away, and the Resurrection Stone with them, to Merlin-only-knew-where and Merlin-only-knew-when. But it was as though the grown-ups were all waiting for something, and were using the tea as an excuse to put off talking until whatever that was came to pass.

Certainly, when a soft rap on the door sounded, they all looked in that direction.

“Come in,” ordered Professor Welsh.

It was Uncle Percy. He didn’t look at all happy, not even by his own standards. “Remy,” he said with a nod as greeting towards the dark-haired woman, and a pained smile in Harry's direction. “Bad news, I’m afraid.”

“It’s gone?” Welsh demanded curtly.

Percy held up his hands, as though to show just how bare they actually were. James and Dominique noticed that his palms and fingers were covered with grey dust and a fine film of cobwebs, and they shifted a little closer to each other. It was as though death had crept into the room with their uncle, and they both knew, without asking, where he had been: inside the tomb of Albus Dumbledore.

“The stone seal was cracked open,” Percy added. “I don’t know if she was there before or after the confrontation. When I arrived the witch we’d put on guard was dead, I couldn’t say for how long. And the Wand is gone.”

In place of their previous silence a sudden wild, frantic, panicked murmur rose up around the table. Welsh and Harry exchanged a glance. “Hush,” the Auror said, and the teachers obeyed, all eyes fixed worriedly upon him. For the first time in his life James truly saw his father through the eyes of the rest of the world; saw it here and now reflected in those scared faces as they looked at him with a kind of mad hope. He was Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Boy Who Saved Them, wondrous, amazing. James felt a rush of pride, and also a dash of shame that he’d never understood this before; that this was what it took for him to have learnt his respect.

His father looked at them all, each and every single one of them, and some how it was _piercing, _even though he still hadn't lowered his hood.

“You seem to have forgotten something,” Harry said softly. “Something that you all should know because all of you, except the youngsters and Andromeda Welsh—”

“Black,” the professor corrected calmly. “I can go by my father’s name now, at least amongst us. And it's just Remy, please.”

Harry nodded, the shadows of his cloak rippling. “Except for Remy Black, then, were present at the Battle when Voldemort killed himself with his own cleverness.”

They all continued to look at him, some blankly, some with struggling understanding, a few – Uncle Percy amongst them – with a sudden bright clarity.

Harry cleared his throat slightly. “Bellatrix cannot truly master the Elder Wand, for she has not won it from me and I am still alive. Furthermore,” he pulled a slender piece of wood from his robes and placed it in front of his teacup where it glinted in the flickering light, “due to the unprecedented foresight of my niece here, were I indeed dead, then it would Miss Dominique Weasley who would be its true master, _not _Bellatrix Lestrange.”

James glanced at his best friend with an awe only marginally less than that with which he’d been looking at his father with a moment before, and the silvery-blonde girl flushed pink beneath the weight of it all.

“It wasn’t on purpose, Uncle Harry,” she stammered as though to free herself from the responsibility of having done Heroically Great Deeds. “I mean, I _meant_ to disarm her, but I had no idea what her Wand was, I – I just did it automatically.”

“Damned lucky you were armed at all,” Charlie grumbled with a gruffly affectionate grin meant for both his niece and his nephew.

James avoided Dominique’s gaze, and muttered, “Yeah well. I’d only just given her wand back when McGon— um – Bellatrix summoned us to her office.”

At that point everyone burst into a kind of frantic chatter again, until a small teacher, from the far end of the table, jumped up, shook his fist a little to get everyone’s attention, and wheezed, “You _knew_, didn’t you? You knew that Minerva McGonagall wasn’t Minerva McGonagall! You let a _monster_ be Headmistress of this school for _twenty-three years!?_ You even sent your own children here! Who does that? But you knew, didn’t you?! Because none of you three seem very surprised,” and he jabbed his hand in the direction of Charlie, Welsh and Harry.

James’ father picked the Elder Wand back up, concealed it beneath his robes again, and answered quietly, “No. No, I did not know that Minerva McGonagall wasn’t Minerva McGonagall. I can assure you that if I had—” A wave of intense anger seemed to pass through the very way in which Harry held himself. The protesting teacher sat back down abruptly and James experienced a thrill of fear as his father continued in that same tight, hard voice: “The most we knew was that something was not right, and even that suspicion only began a few short years ago. Silence… the land had become silent.”

Those around the table stared at him.

Harry sighed. “Twenty-one years we've been rounding up Death Eaters. Twenty-one years we've been apprehending pathetic little witches and wizards who saw a vacuum in power in the world of the Dark Arts, saw a gap in the underbelly of our wizarding world and thought they might be big enough to fill it. It’s to be expected. It’s been so the whole history of the world, really, Muggle and magical alike. But two years ago it stopped. What could that mean? Had all the Death Eaters simply quit, been rounded up, or just run out? Had the wizarding world turned a new leaf, so to speak, _en masse, _and decided to behave themselves?”

Harry paused again, to let his words sink in.

Dominique’s hand reached out across James’s leg, and wrapped itself around his clenched hand where he held it bunched at his knee; he unclenched his fingers and entwined them amongst hers.

“Was that the answer, ladies and gentlemen?” asked Harry. “Oh, I can’t tell you how much I hoped it was, but it goes without saying that I doubted it. I guessed that someone who really _was _big enough, and bad enough, must have finally appeared, and had begun to take control, and _organise_, other witches and wizards with Dark inclinations. But whether it was someone new, or someone old that we had missed, I couldn’t say.” The half-light of the fireplace lit up enough of Harry’s lower face, beneath the shadows of his cloak, for James to see a slightly bitter smile curve amongst his father’s beard. “All I knew was that it wasn’t Voldemort but, of course, that’s not much of a narrowing-down.”

Charlie actually chuckled.

Harry joined him for a second, then continued. “It was only late in August that we started to suspect someone at Hogwarts. It was Hagrid who alerted us, actually, with his talk about ‘funny types’ in the Forest. We realised that there was a chance that a certain object I once lost there was being searched for… Anyway. As for me sending my children here… Firstly, what could I do? If this new enemy were at Hogwarts, were someone here, then what message would it send if I, and the other members of the Order, and the other Aurors, withdrew our children? As always it’s the innocent who are pawns in the greater wizard’s chess.”

The group of Night Watchmen (well, technically Dutch Arquebusiers in broad daylight, but time makes even Rembrandt's work dusky), in a painting near the fireplace, applauded loudly, but Harry ignored them, glancing sideways at his son with a sudden smile, big and bright and visible even despite his hood and beard, and added, “Pawns who can play surprisingly well under their own steam, if I might say so.”  
James beamed back at him.

“But why tonight?” asked Hannah Longbottom slowly, her fingers tapping nervously against the rim of her teacup. “Why suddenly reveal herself now?”

“Because tonight she realised that the object of her search in the Forest had been moved beyond her reach,” answered her husband’s quiet voice, Hannah’s face growing immediately brighter and calmer from the sheer virtue of having heard his voice. Neville closed the door behind him gently: he must have slipped in without them noticing. He nodded at Welsh. “I got Peeves’ message, and I’ve alerted the rest of the Order, who’ll contact the Ministry.” He slid into the chair beside his wife, his steady hand capturing up hers and soothing it into stillness between the saucers.

“And then she flew off, the idiot,” commented James, suddenly remembering the role Bellatrix had played in the Herbology teacher's life, and feeling a bizarre need to fill the silence before it could even appear. “Without the Elder Wand or _that_ from the Forest – she must be pretty pissed right now.”

But his father didn’t smile. “Don’t I wish, Jamie. Unfortunately, she has something… possibly even more dangerous, at least so far as immediate issues matter.”

For the first time since his arrival, Harry Potter both raised his head to the light and pulled the deep hood of his Auror’s clock backwards, revealing his face.

Where his eyes should have been, green and thoughtful, were nothing but empty, ghastly, hollows.


	28. Dust And Tears

“Don’t be miserable,” said Scorpius.

Rose gaped at him as she stood up, with a great deal of difficulty, and then leant against him like a cripple. She shielded her view with the hand she wasn’t using to cling to him, and gazed out across the plain with narrowed eyes, as though narrowing them would help her to see better where they were, and what had just happened to them, and why the living hell they’d managed to land smack in the middle of a quickly travelling army, seeing as that was all it could possibly have been that had quite literally run over them. She was trembling so very much that her shaking even hid the boy’s own fear, but she still summoned up the strength to glare at him angrily. “Miserable? Miserable? Miserable doesn’t even begin to _cover_ what I’m feeling right now, Scorpius Malfoy! Do you have any idea what I’ve just done to us? An _army _ran over the top of us! An army! Plus we’re stuck in a foreign country in a foreign era and it’s all my fault and…” she let her hand drop to her side, limp with visible defeat, “…my wand’s broken.” The pieces were protruding raw and useless from the top of her pocket.

“I’d be more worried about the fact that your leg’s broken, if I were you,” Scorpius replied sharply, but not completely unsympathetically, and then added, “At least you know that all your harebrained theories were right.”

Rose stared at his calmness with a desperate astonishment. “Oh, I’m just _thrilled.”_ She looked like she was going to cry.

“Ah—” He flailed about for something to say, _anything _to say to avoid _that_, because it was taking every ounce of his Malfoy blood to keep a cool head as it was, and he rather suspected that a crying girl (worse, a crying Rose) would push him over the edge. “Look at it this way; someone should be expecting us, right? I mean, that was the entire point.”

Rose blinked up at him, her pupils oddly enlarged and tinted shimmery-blurry by the salt water sheened across them, and a couple of tears spilled over despite the way she clenched her jaw in determination to keep them back. She wiped them away rapidly with the hem of her sleeve, hiccuped, and answered, with a look on her face of almost panicked concentration, “Yes, I guess. I mean, _no_, actually, because the manuscript fell apart in our hands. Maybe we didn’t even get back as far as we were supposed to!” Her sentence ended in a something frighteningly akin to a wail and her knees gave way, plomping her abruptly down on the ground, tears falling freely now, and then she let out a gasp of pain as her distressed brain caught up with the fact that the bones in her leg had been shattered in a way that bones most certainly weren’t supposed to be.

Malfoy rubbed a hand against his face in weary desperation, and then pulled her back to her feet, struggling slightly with her dead weight since she wasn’t helping him in the least, and leaning her body back against his side. “Look,” he managed with a further edge of sharpness to his voice, “Let’s at least get into the shade.” He tried to keep his face business-like, tried to keep it the way he imagined his father would do in a situation like this, but it was really more for his own sake than the girl’s, since she didn’t even look at him, just snuffled against his shoulder where her head had rested. Restraining the increasing urge to freak out _(Dad wouldn’t freak, Dad wouldn’t freak)_, he tried to focus on something else (anything else; what was Albus doing about the fact that they’d vanished?) and helped her over towards the bushes he’d motioned to. “The shade might help us consider matters clearer, don’t you think? Either way there’s no point in us getting heatstroke. And look at it this way, Rose, maybe the manuscript was _supposed _to fall apart at that point. Besides, we’ll find someone. There has to be a witch or wizard _somewhere_. We’ll… figure something out.”

“You’re sweet, Mal,” mumbled Rose almost dreamily, as though she were talking through a veil of water, “but in the end the simple fact is that we’re screwed sideways, and I screwed us. I don’t even know for sure we’re in the ‘right’ century. I don’t even know – I don’t even know what I was _thinking._” And she started crying again, but quietly now, and Malfoy suspected that the pain of her shattered leg was getting to her. He set her down in the shade where she sat in a floppy, numb kind of way and for the length of a second he hated her intensely for causing all this, and then he hated himself even more for hating her, and dug his wand out of his pocket. “I’m not good at healing spells,” he said softly, “and there’s no way I’m game to try fixing your leg, but I think I know a way to lessen the pain.” Rose didn’t answer, so he just nodded to himself, straightened his shoulders, and whispered something that he was pleased she wasn’t fully conscious enough to be aware of. The spell was one which walked a fine line between Dark Magic and the more approved curriculum and was not, he was pretty sure, supposed to be used for this – but the sharp sting of pain that flooded through him as his magic fed upon her loudest emotions told him that it was wincingly effective. He sat beside her, biting his lip with a combination of discomfort, as the ache of pain became loud and throbbing, and guilt, at the knowledge that she wouldn’t approve of the spell having been used upon her, and watched as her breathing slowed and her hand, which was gripping white-knuckled amongst the folds of his school robe’s sleeve, started to slowly relax. Relying heavily on his instinct for self-preservation (his father would have laughed dryly and said it was the Black coming out in him) Scorpius tried to partition the pain in his mind and put it out of his way, and, in the process of doing so, realised suddenly that a small fraction of him was thankful for Rose’s breakdown because it was probably the only thing that had stopped him from having one himself. He ran his thoughts through the hurt streaming from her and found it increasingly hard to breathe, his mind stuttering at the vague awareness that, beyond and beneath the waves of pain, his magic was reeling in other emotions from her, warm and sweet, and leaving him curled with guilt for touching upon them in this way.

He bit his lip until it bled. He was convinced that it was her mind which would save them, just as it was her mind that had got them into this, and therefore he needed it clear of pain; that was his justification. It was the only way, and he was no healer besides.

As Rose’s face started to regain its usual complexion her hand slipped from his sleeve and he caught it up, without thinking, before it could scrap knuckle-grazingly against the rough sand and pebbles on which they sat, and wrapped it safely in his own. There was something, he thought, probably rather wrong with him, because here he was, Merlin-knew-when and Merlin-knew-where, sucking up the pain of the girl beside him in a way that could only count as emotional betrayal, and yet all he could think of was that he’d never held her hand before, and it was smaller than he’d thought, and fit perfectly inside the curve of his fingers, and he really, really didn’t want to let it go…


	29. The Prophet Samuel

“This is stupid, Rose,” said Scorpius in an unusually sharp voice, and rubbed his hand, slightly annoyed, against his short beard. The hair of it was blond, but glinted almost-white in the sideways light of the sun, pouring in through the linen-covered window, and staining the rest of the room contrastingly honey-coloured.

The young woman sighed and flung herself, with only a _tinge _of drama (it was impossible to avoid adopting at least a breath of drama when you'd spent that much time close with a Malfoy), against the divan she’d been resting on, barely hiding a smile at her own antics. Then she sighed again, a little more seriously. “I know, Mal, I’m sorry. You of all people know, better than anyone, that it’s like a bug that crawls into my ear once every six months or so. I can't help but scratch at it.”

“More like once every three months. Don’t get me wrong, I understand your desire to get back but—”

A shimmer of a smile twitched around Rose's clear brown eyes. “Liar. You’ve never been happier in your entire life.” And she reached out, caught a fistful of the front of his robes in her hand, and pulled him down onto the couch beside her, thumb flicking comfortably along the length of his face with teasing affection.

He slid his hand along her neck in response, pushing back the sedately-coloured cloth that covered (with so much injustice, in his opinion) the brightness of her hair, and leaning in to breathe in the taste of her skin. His lips had just wandered their way from her ear to her mouth when they were interrupted by a discreet cough, and the curtain over the doorway was opened. Rose's eyes darted over her husband's shoulder and gazed, not really approvingly, at the rather squat little man who stood there. He had a great deal of unkempt hair sprouting in every direction, a downcast gaze, and a voice that was low as he said, "Not meaning to disturb, Master, but the Prophet wishes to see you."

Scorpius waved his hand lazily at the door without even turning around, and Rose watched as the slave backed out with surprising discretion. It had taken her literally _years _to accept a slave in their household, but suddenly they kept popping up all over the place whenever she least expected them; not at all surprisingly, however, her husband was a natural when it came to handing out orders. Normally she complained fiercely whenever she caught sight of one, but Scorpius was _also_ a naturally talented kisser, which rather distracted her from complaining, seeing as it was kissing that he continued to linger at before she eventually pushed him away and said, “Go on, or the old man will get tetchy. We only have a few months more at the most, surely. Not that I’m looking forwards to his death, of course, but…”

Scorpius frowned, and brushed the loose strands of hair, which he'd mused up, away from her brow, in a comforting way. “I know what you mean, Rose, don’t worry. We’re getting to the point finally.” Then he patted a hand lightly against the peak of her belly, which curved smoothly against his palm, and added, “Behave yourself while I’m gone.”

“Oh, yes, _master_,” she mocked, and watched, amused, as he grinned and left.

When the curtain had shivered back into place behind him, Rose rested her head against a pillow and stared, unseeing, upwards. Every three months – he was probably right about the time frame – yes, every three months some insane and absolutely hopeless idea would surface in her brain about how they’d get home. Even if she was torn now between where _home _actually was – after all, a decade is a long time. A lot can happen in a decade – and a decade it was since they’d arrived face down in the desert that day. Not that it had gone neither smoothly nor according to plan; Scorpius had managed to knock himself out in his effort to heal her and, at the time, she’d been distraught that nothing had been as she’d expected it to be. But then, a fourteen year-old girl is much more likely, even in the maddest of times, to expect everything to function in a logical manner, whereas a twenty-four year-old witch wasn’t under the same illusions. They had, at least, arrived on the right part of the globe. Although, even that hadn’t been much of a help, to be completely honest. The smattering of Hebrew that Rose had learnt from old Mr Goldman was about as useful as it would be to arrive in ancient Rome speaking the tourist-version of modern Italian. Still, their school robes had, at least, been a small mercy – she could imagine what might have happened if she’d turned up in the modern Muggle clothes she used to wear in her free time.

The fact that Scorpius’s wand hadn’t been broken like hers had been was another blessing; it had been all that had stopped them from ending up as slaves themselves and even if she didn’t particularly like to think how many people he had Stunned, Confunded and even, once, used the _Imperius _curse upon, it had been what had kept them alive, during those first few months when they’d struggled to make sense of the foreign time and space they’d found themselves thrust into. It was the _Imperius _curse, too, which had finally led them to the prophet Samuel, because it turned out that the last arrogant, loud-mouthed man Scorpius had used it on was none other than King Saul himself, who had a dangerous predilection for walking around like a common person and making a general nuisance of himself. They’d almost died because of that, and not just from generalised mortification, but also from a nasty case of swords-through-the-belly. It was the wizened old prophet who’d appeared without warning and declared the pair inexplicably under his protection and patronage, which had saved them. His only explanation to the king – although clearly Samuel generally worked under the presumption that a man of his age and authority only had to give explanations when he jolly well felt like it – was that they were ‘messengers’, and _keep your hands and your men’s hands off them. _With the aid of the prophet they’d learnt so much faster about the culture in which they found themselves plunged. Of course, it had been useful that one of his nifty little Seer tricks had already advised him of who they were – and he’d been much impressed by the Resurrection Stone when Rose, who was its unspoken guardian, had grudgingly shown it to him.

By the time the next six months had rolled around they’d been speaking the language like almost-locals, and both had held positions in Saul’s court, even though the king continued to loathe the very sight of them.

“Riddle me this,” Rose had said one day to the old prophet, as she sat and watched him work with his wiry hands coloured pink with twilight. “Why are Mal and I here?”

How many times had she asked him that? And never once, not even _once_, had he even made so much as an attempt to answer. By the end of ten years she honestly would have been happy with a simple “oh, because I thought it might be funny”, but he'd insisted on shaking his head and denying all knowledge of a manuscript or things called Port-keys.

Now Rose groaned slightly, and sat up. She knew it was reaching the time when things were going to change. King Saul’s reign was falling apart around his ears and David, beautiful, young David, was in full play. Rose knew how the story went; she knew that soon Samuel would die and then Saul would banish all the witches and wizards from the land, including them - especially them. At which point she planned on coming back on her own, to play the part of the Witch of Endor. Saul would come to her, she knew, because he knew her name and her face and trusted her despite the problems he’d had with Scorpius; trusted her perhaps for the very reason that he despised her - she always spoke the truth. And then she would Summon up the prophet from the dead and he’d speak his words…

That part had bothered her for a long time, because she knew full well that only the rightful owner of the Resurrection Stone could wield it. Finally it had occurred to her, however, two years ago, ironically in the midst of the apparently inspiring delirium of the pain leading up to childbirth, that none of the Stone’s owners had even been born yet and so she was as worthy to lay claim on it as anyone else.

She’d named her son Nicolas – _victory – _in honour of the revelation he’d gifted her with, even if Mal had pouted about the star part of his son's name (Orion) coming second.

So she’d be able to wield the Stone. And then, oh Merlin finally then, she and Mal had promised themselves, they could leave this hard, beautiful land that he so loved, and make the long journey to the inordinately softer one that called to her in her dreams. _England__. _  
There was a loud noise at the doorway and then her husband re-appeared, a no-nonsense expression on his face, and Nick wrapped in his arms. Rose slipped to her feet quickly and, in response to her unspoken question, Scorpius nodded and threw her her travelling cloak. “It’s over. He’s dead. And Saul’s already made it clear that you and I are to leave.”

"But the funeral..."

Scorpius shook his head. "I'm sorry, Rosie. We have no choice."

Rose frowned and shrugged her cloak around her, swept a few items into her rather worn but more-precious-than-ever bag, and then took her son from his father’s arms. Nicolas smelt of warm milk and dry dust, and she pressed her cheek to his forehead as he smiled, carefree, up at her.

“There are days,” muttered Scorpius, “when I wish I’d learnt to Apparate before we’d come here. I can_not_ believe that none of the wizards here have ever heard of it. The cosmos mocks me.”

Rose laughed against Nicolas’s neck, but then felt a surge of grief as the sound of the mourners lamenting the prophet’s death swung up around them. Scorpius put his hand on her elbow and together they left their home. Rose would miss Samuel. He’d been their protector, and almost like a father to her, even if he and Scorpius had seen eye-to-eye on very little. But she didn’t look back, just watched as the soldiers near the village entrance blinked in astonishment when her husband pulled out his wand and Confunded the pair of them. Saul had despised Scorpius with a particular tang of dislike, which wasn't really surprising, thought Rose with a wry smile, seeing as he had a particularly infamous temper where handsome young men were involved...

*

Some time later a witch summoned up the shade of Samuel, who informed Saul dryly that he was idiot and that his God had forsaken him, and then Rose was shoving the Resurrection Stone away in her bottomless bag and watching the King, well-fed from the meal she’d felt almost obliged to offer the doomed, stubborn man, ride away; it was the least she could do when she knew how his story ended.  
Scorpius came out of the shadows where he'd remained concealed, and put his arms around her, watching the King and his men turn into specks on the horizon. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Oddly bitter,” she admitted quietly, dropping her head onto his shoulder, auburn curls tickling his face as the wind coaxed her hair from the veil she wore. “Even now he’s dead the old man still won’t admit that he made that manuscript. Even after I wrote out all I could remember and showed it to him, he just looked baffled and said he couldn’t have written about something that didn’t take place until after his death, as though he weren’t a prophet. So the same old answer he always gave…”

Scorpius sighed. It had always been the matter of contention between himself and the prophet; he'd always felt that Samuel's denial of understanding how they'd gotten there was tantamount to ensuring he could never return Rose to the era she dreamt of. “Come on," he said. "It doesn't matter anymore. Let’s take you back to Britain.”  
She nodded and then added, with a last glance at the horizon, and curling her fingers in amongst his, “I’d just like to know what the _point _of it all was…”


	30. His Father's Eyes

Dominique had let out a shriek and, despite himself, James had jerked backwards in his chair hard enough to almost fall off. Not that anyone else had noticed, seeing as they had all suffered a similar reaction - well, all except Welsh, who had seen that last bolt of magic which Bellatrix had shot before losing her wand and fleeing. Now she alone looked Harry straight in the face, stomaching the deeply unpleasant sight of the empty sockets where his eyes ought have been, and said lowly, "It's an ancient magic she's used... and it's my fault. I taught it her."

Before anyone else could say a word in response to her statement, Charlie reached his right hand across the angle of the table between them, and squeezed her arm reassuringly. She flinched slightly beneath his touch, which caused a confused line to form between his eyebrows (though James and Dominique, who were watching the small interchange, understood full well even if their uncle didn't, seeing as they hadn't forgotten the ghastly self-inflicted wounds that laced their DADA professor's arms), but then continued to speak. "The eyes are the windows of the soul," she explained softly. "It's a proverb which even Muggles make free use of, and they aren't completely hollow words. Amongst my ancestors there lingered the belief, inherited from earlier eras, that the physical consumption of a portion of another's anatomy lent you the power of that portion. So if an enemy were courageous and you ate his heart, his courage would beat inside your veins too, enhancing your own."

Nobody appeared able to talk; Hannah Longbottom looked positively nauseous.

"I'm not saying that Harry Potter's eyes will actually give Bellatrix his _soul_," continued the Māori softly. "The proverb is surely somewhat exaggerated on that point... perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the eyes are the portals of the mind."

James couldn't help himself - he had to speak, even though his voice was catching painfully upon the corners of his thoughts. "You're saying that Bellatrix Lestrange - the Bellatrix Lestrange - is going to _eat my Dad's eyes _to see into his MIND?!"

He was struggling with the urge to vomit.

Welsh nodded. "Yes."

Harry sat back slightly in his chair, and lowered his hood again, probably more than aware of the effect his visage was having on them, and said, in his calm voice – which was even more remarkable in the light of what they now knew had been done to him – “It’s a frightening thought. Everything I know is now, or soon will be, inside the accursed head of the Lestrange woman. The names of everyone who will be her enemies if she continues down this path... all the secrets I keep for myself and all those which I keep for others… but not only that. You must understand that this is a game within games. My mind does not only contain _my _mind. It contains fragments of the minds of those who came before me – Severus Snape, Professor Dumbledore; everyone I’ve ever shared Pensieve memories with. Everyone whom I’ve ever practised Legilimency upon.”

There was a pause. Dominique's brain latched onto the thought that she'd _known _her uncle could practise Legilimency better than he professed. She shivered.

Uncle Harry continued: “_...and _the mind of Tom Riddle. I have no idea how Bellatrix plans to use this knowledge that she has garnered herself. Perhaps she thinks the connection will be continuous – which is not the case. Already, since she’s flown, I’ve thought new thoughts which she will never have access to. Well, I make no claim to understand how _her _brain works, anyway... I’m the first to admit how preposterous the concept is that she could impersonate Minerva McGonagall, of all people…” He poured himself a cup of tea and cradled it in his hands, allowing the others the time to absorb the new information, then, drinking down the brew in three swift mouthfuls, concluded, "And now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to talk to my children. Alone.”

A few seconds passed before the teachers realised that he wasn’t leaving, but was simply dismissing them. In a surprisingly subdued manner, most of them stood up and left the room, leaving only the Longbottoms, Charlie and Welsh.

Harry motioned towards Neville – James wondered with a start how his father knew where he was looking if he couldn’t _see_ – and said, “Fetch Lily and Albus up for me if you would. And – and Hugo too.”

Neville nodded. With Hannah at his side, he hurried out.

“You've already messaged Ron and Hermione?” Harry asked Charlie.

“Not directly, no,” admitted his brother-in-law, “though they will have got the general gist of the Bellatrix business with the Order message. There's nothing about Rosie in that, though.”

“Contact them. I don’t want their daughter’s disappearance forgotten in the general unpleasantness of current events and – make you sure you contact Draco and his wife too. See? I’d already forgotten _them _myself_. _Have them come to Hogwarts, if they’re willing. I’d like someone to explain what has happened face-to-face. It’s not something to be owled about.”

Charlie nodded, and left.

“...which will require someone to explain it first to me,” continued Harry in a low voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

There was a silence.

James realised that Welsh was looking at them, as though he or Dominique should know more about this than she did. He shook his head. “I have no idea. I've only heard Albus’s explanation to McG— to the Headmistress. Apparently they’d found a manuscript which they believed was a Port-key to the past, or something, because they thought some ancient seer fellow wanted them to take him the Resurrection Stone. That’s all I know. Albus said they’d broken the protective spell on the manuscript and then, vanished. That’s all I know. That’s all _Albus _knows, I reckon.” James paused, then added, “He was really freaked out, I think he tried to tell everything he could. He wanted to make it all better.”

“Including their little theory, yet again, that I was on the hunt for the Stone myself,” added Welsh. “You have one hell of a mob of kids in your family, Harry Potter, and they're all too smart for their own good.”

Harry smiled. “You forget that it’s your family too, Remy. You know the genealogies are all tangled, apart from the fact that your father was my godfather. That makes you family all in itself.”

“You mean Rose was right?” blurted out Dominique, before Welsh could respond to that. “You really _were_ looking for the Stone?”

The dark woman inclined her head stiffly. “Of course. The Headmistress took to me like a house on fire, you know, and entrusted the job to me without so much as a pause for thought. The daughter of Severus Snape, that was her theory. To be honest, I can see why. Who else would have felt the need to send his woman and newborn child fleeing half way across the globe upon the defeat of Voldemort? Bellatrix didn’t understand that Snape had been fixated with your own mother, because she was blind like that. And she never so much as considered her own cousin. But when my father was slammed in Azkaban my mother was at a loss. His own friends believed he was the enemy, the old enemies remained his enemies – who could she turn to? No-one. So she went back home.”

“Of course! _Osiris!”_ bellowed James. "That little black dog you like to charm into life – the cartouche said Osiris – Sirius! The constellation... Lily was nuts about Egyptology when Uncle Bill brought her a scarab necklace back one time and... weren't the Sirius A and Sirius B stars supposed to be Osiris and Isis, or something? That’s why it’s your Patronus!”

“Well done, Mr Potter,” she approved softly.

“But your Patronus is changing,” broke in Dominique, picking up the threads of her best friend’s thoughts as though they shared a mind. “And it’s been changing ever since James told you that Sirius used to take the shape of a shaggy black dog. I remember you repeating it back to him strangely. I thought you were angry but—”

“But I wasn’t. Just very emotional. I’d known my father became a dog, but my mother had never told me which type, and that was never something anyone else had proffered up to me the whole time I’d been near the Order. I suppose they presumed I knew, seeing as everyone else did…”

“But the lessons you set?” persisted Dominique.

Welsh shrugged. “If Bellatrix manages to get her own Reign of Terror kick-started then Patronuses probably won't hurt. As for you two…”  
“The animagus thing?”

“Frankly, I was just hoping to get your minds off following me around,” she admitted and laughed slightly. “Plus, I meant what I said. It’s a useful skill.”

“But Dad,” interjected James. “In the hospital ward you didn’t know her…?”

Harry smiled slightly. “I can act too, Jamie.”

Dominique cleared her throat carefully. “And… Uncle Charlie?”

Welsh glowered. “I can’t explain that. You’d have to ask him. But I promise I never waved a wand at that man…” It might have been a trick of the light, but there was a small chance that she was blushing.

Dominique blushed too.

“Is the interrogation over?” asked the antipodean witch. “I mean, why stop now when you’re on such a roll…?”

_“Remy,”_ said James. “Your name, I mean. It’s another reason why we didn’t trust you. We have a – uhhh – a way of knowing people’s real names and it had you down as _A. Welsh_. But we heard Charlie call you Remy and—”

“And didn’t think that I was the nickname type?”

Dominique blushed even deeper.

Welsh’s lips twitched. “Hmmm. Well, my name is indeed Andromeda,”

“After Teddy’s grandmother… Sirius’s favourite cousin,” murmured Harry.

She nodded. “Yes. But my mother always called me Remy, because that was the name he – my father – had dubbed me when I was still in the womb. Apparently he was convinced I would be a boy and he wanted to call me after his—”

“Best friend Remus Lupin!” bellowed James, to whom all the old figures of his father’s past were quasi-legendary.

“Jackpot,” confirmed the witch, and then smiled a little sadly again.

James and Dominique were rather under the impression that a smiling Welsh was even more disturbing than a glowering one.


	31. Malfoy’s Mother

“I’m sorry,” Harry said quietly. “I really am.”

Hermione and Ron Weasley just sat there and stared at him, Hugo huddled between them and looking impossibly young, young even for a first-year. Hermione had her face crunched up in deep thought and Ron just looked stunned; it was debatable if they were following a word Harry was saying.

Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, was pacing the room. “There must be something – some way – some_ thing._”

He kept giving his wife odd little looks; she sat a little away from the Weasleys, and seemed to be taking it all awfully well; much better than Draco was. Though she did jump a little when he leant in towards Harry and bellowed, across the desk that separated them, “THIS IS MY SON WE’RE TALKING ABOUT!”

But when he’d seen beneath Harry’s hood he’d stumbled back, even paler than his usual, and, with a dry retching sound he'd managed to demand, “Merlin, Harry, what have you done to yourself?”

Harry smiled sadly, and rubbed at his beard in a thoughtful way. “Do you know, I don’t remember you ever using my first name with such ease before?”

“I—” Draco’s lips sought for words and failed.

“Your aunt has returned, Draco, and has seen fit to avail herself of my eyes.”

Draco’s knuckles went white, knuckle-gripped at the edge of the desk. All remaining colour slid from his features as if what he were hearing were the bell-toll of his own life’s end. Still, he shut his eyes for a moment and then asked, as if Harry had never mentioned Bellatrix at all, “What was Scorpius doing with the Weasley girl anyway?”

“I'm under the impression that they have grown close. That is what my elder son informs me, anyway. It seems they were planning to attend the Yule Ball together.”

Hermione jumped to her feet before Draco could respond. “I’m going to find her,” she exclaimed.

Harry’s smile faded. “Hermione, you can’t, I’ve explained…”

Ron grabbed his wife’s arm, her movement having summoned him back to reality. She shook him off impatiently. “I’m not an imbecile, Harry. I’m not planning on building a bloody time machine. I mean I’m going to find her. In _books._ If my little girl is somewhere in the past she’ll have made a mark. I just know it. She’ll be there, in the pages of history.” And then, her voice breaking as if she weren’t even sure she believed her own words but couldn’t afford not to, she span on her heels and fled. Ron made a helpless noise and, pulling a distraught and utterly confused looking Hugo along in his wake, he followed his wife in her hasty exit from the room.

Malfoy’s wife continued to watch it all play out before her serenely, barely so much as blinking.

Harry, who continued to seem preternaturally capable of following what was going on around him despite not being able to see an inch of it, shifted in his chair and asked quietly, “Draco – does your wife speak English?”

Draco’s shoulders stiffened and he glared. “No,” he replied defensively. “What’s that to you?”

Harry paused. “Just… does that mean she hasn’t understood a word I’ve told you? About Scorpius?”

Draco made a slightly strangled sound. “That’s right.”

“And you are going to tell her?”

“Not with you as an audience, Potter, no.”

“Ah. Then I shall leave you.”

The Auror disentangled himself from his position behind the desk, one hand guiding him, barely noticeably, along the table, and he left the room in silence.

*

Draco Malfoy ran a hand through his smoothed back, slightly receding hair, and then lowered himself onto his knees before his wife, his face suddenly softer than Harry Potter, or anyone else he’d ever been at school with, would ever have dreamt him capable of.

“Kiseiko-chan, _aisai…_”

...quarter of an hour later she sat in the chair, make-up a little blurred as tears moved in slow silence down her face. “And they don’t know how to get him back? Get them back? Our boy and this little girl too?” she asked, her native language trembling beneath the onslaught of emotion.

“I don’t much care about the girl,” Draco muttered.

“You should,” she said. “If you’re right – if what the Auror told you was right – then our son must care for her, at least enough for_ us_ to care.” It was a soft voice, hers, but as always it wound its way into the base of his soul and caught fast.

“I’m sorry, I just…”

She put her hand against the side of his face. “Maybe you can find a way?”

He probably could have dealt with just about anything, anything at all, except her unconditional faith in his abilities to obtain the impossible. A sob started to rise in him, a sob like he hadn’t known since he was a boy, since he was last inside the walls of this damned castle, but he was saved from his shame at his own weakness by the sound of the door opening again.

“Potter,” he snarled, passing a sleeve across his face and turning fiercely.

But it wasn’t Potter, it was a woman he’d never seen before in his life.

“Who’re you?” he snapped. “Auror Potter’s not here if it’s him you’re looking for. Nor is anyone else.”

The woman gazed at him with a strange expression. “Draco Malfoy?” she inquired, ignoring his words. “And Mrs Malfoy?”

He nodded curtly, and repeated, “Who’re you?”

“Professor Andromeda Welsh,” she responded calmly, and advanced towards him. “Mostly known as Remy, daughter of Ilna Welsh and Sirius… Black.” She thrust a hand out, and added, “I’m not sure – my father wasn’t your uncle, but your mother’s cousin. We’re related, anyway,” was her crisp conclusion.

Draco looked at her hand as though she were offering him a cobra, and then did his best to ignore it. Welsh wasn’t shaken so easily, however, and she didn’t lower it, just gazed at him stubbornly. The matter was settled, however, by Kiseiko Malfoy rising to her feet slowly, taking the witch’s hand in hers, and clasping it for a moment, whilst inclining her head slightly.

Remy smiled and inclined her head in response without a moment’s hesitation. “English?” she asked and the small woman shook her head. “Ah... _Nihongo ga hanasemasu ka?_

Draco, who had turned away, spun back with a darkly shocked expression on his face as his wife nodded, and then the professor proceeded to state the facts over again, if perhaps a little better ordered this time, in reasonably fluent (if somewhat idiosyncratic) Japanese.  
“Where I come from,” she explained, “Muggle children are taught Asian languages in school rather than European. On the whole.”

“You’re a half-blood?” he broke in to demand, now all three of them speaking in Japanese.

“No. Pureblood, if that matters to you. My mother was the last in a long line of wizards from _Te Wai Pounamu_. New Zealand’s South Island,” she added, as if her accent (even through the Japanese) were not explanation enough.

“Funny,” Draco drawled. “From the stories I’d heard I’d always imagined your father would marry a Muggle.”

But, “The last of your line?” inquired Kiseiko softly, before Welsh could rise to the bait. “You're not married? You haven't any children of your own?”

Welsh shook her head. “No. And I don't imagine I will. Either way, it's your son I want to talk about.”

“You taught Scorpius?” asked Draco sharply.

“Yes. Defence Against The Dark Arts. He'd just mastered a rather gracefully-formed ferret as his Patronus.”

To her surprise, the blond man gave her a strangely piercing look, as though he suspected she were somehow making fun of him. Raising her eyebrows slightly, she continued on, supremely ignorant of some of the more ignoble periods of his youth. “He and Rose Weasley were the quickest adepts in their year. Although,” she mused, “Rose's fox was unlike any I've ever seen – she told me it was the desert variety.

Very odd, because Patronuses are usually linked to heart-ties in some way and I was under the impression that she'd never left Britain until, well, the current business...”

“And our son?” prompted the small Japanese woman gently.

“I feel it's my fault,” admitted the teacher. “I knew what they were up to but I couldn't see how to interfere without drawing attention to them. If Bellatrix had realised that they possessed the Stone...”

Harry had already explained that part to the Malfoys.

“She wanted to summon up the Dark Lord, didn't she?” Draco rolled up his sleeve and thrust the now-pale Dark Mark beneath her gaze. She didn't blink, but simply rolled up her own sleeves and bared into the clear cool light her own arms, chocolate brown but swollen with cuts even worse than usual.

Mrs Malfoy let out a small gasp, and Draco reeled backward. “What the hell is that?”

Welsh surveyed her damage coolly. “Proof that I understand what it means to be subject to the mastery of another, Mr Malfoy. And to explain to you that I must assuage that master first – I must hunt down Bellatrix Lestrange as part of that – and then, then I will do everything in my power to find a way to bring your son back...”


	32. A Dragon-Sized Problem

“I don't suppose you can shut that thing up?” asked Remy acidly and pointed her wand in the direction of the old hollow tree, which was swearing blue murder at the top of its voice. “Not that the potty mouth doesn't bring back fond memories of my maternal grandmother but, really, it's starting to grate on my nerves.”

“Sorry 'bout that,” muttered Hagrid in a low tone which somehow managed to imply that he wasn't the least bit sorry at all. “I've tried shutting it up afore, and I'm not the only one. When young Aberforth tole his ma about it she wrote to the school board and demanded it be silenced, but they never did. O'course, old Dumbledore himself probably could've done it but by then I reckon mostly everyone had forgotten 'bout it.”

James gave Hagrid a quick, curious look, “If Aberforth told his mother, doesn't that mean he was still at school? What was he doing out here in the Forest?”

“Well, before my time weren't it, so I dunno? But I reckon old Aberforth always went pretty much wherever he damn well pleased.”

The DADA teacher snorted. “I'm starting to think that that's the norm around here. Did _any _of you actually follow the rules when you were at school?”

Professor Longbottom and James' father exchanged a meaningful glance. Hagrid looked intently at the handle of his pink umbrella, sticking out the top of his galoshes. And Charlie laughed. “Wrong people to be asking. We're the Order of the Phoenix, not the league of British saints.”

The tree let out another hair-curling stream of foulness.

The woman glared at it and snapped, “Fine. And why exactly are we standing around here, listening to a hunk of wood insult both ourselves and our mothers, instead chasing Bellatrix? Unless, of course, the aim is for us to all learn a few shiny new swearwords to throw at the witch in between unforgivable curses?"

Dominique and James spluttered with mirth at the mental image that that conjured up, though they regretted it a moment later because Hagrid, for what had to be the fifth time that morning, burst abruptly into a long howl of grief.

Remy put her hands over her eyes and muttered something that might _possibly_ have extended the hollow tree's vocabulary.

“Poor Minerva!” Hagrid wailed in between great, heaving sobs that made his massive old chest rise and fall like a small beached whale. “I never saw – never expected – such a tough old bird!” The sobs were getting uncontrollable; from experience of the other four times, Dominique and James guessed they would rise to a crescendo and then end abruptly in a loud blowing-of-the-nose. But, until that point, they would all be forced to stand around looking uncomfortably considerate. “She were at Hogwarts with me y'know!” he continued.

“Third-Year, when I started, very kind to all us littl'ies!”

The teenagers stared at each other and wondered if the adjective _little _had ever actually suited Hagrid.

“Pushy too, sure, but kind. Had a good heart. Rather like the mam of our poor little Rosie!” and then, at that tragic thought, he let up another howl.

“I can't deal with this,” hissed James, and he and his best friend moved quietly off down the path towards the clearing where they had run into their Uncle Charlie some time ago.

Professor Welsh's eyes followed the students as they left, and so did the hooded shadows of Harry's cloak.

“It's not that I don't feel bad about it!” burst out James the moment they were suitably out of earshot. “I do! Honestly! I think it's bloody disgusting that that revolting woman was our Headmistress and we never knew! And yet...!”

_“Don't judge a book by its cover,” _said Dominique suddenly.

“What?”

“Don't – that's what she said to me. Remember? When I was criticising the textbook that time? She – she was poking fun at us and I never even suspected.”

“How _could _you have suspected?” James grumbled. “Seeing as we never knew the real McGonagall anyway?”

That was a numbing thought, and they walked in silence, pressed beneath the weight of it, until they entered the clearing. A group of wizards were gathered there, gesticulating wildly, and loudly, at the manticore-dragon half-breed. A blue haze of smoke rose up around them and the breeze was weighted with the sticky-sweet scent of pipe tobacco. They must have been there, arguing, for quite some time, and the teenagers decided it would be prudent to leave them to it. Skirting around the temporary cage that had been constructed to keep the dragicore from getting itself into any further mischief, they found themselves a not-too-damp fallen tree to sit upon, and watched the scene before them, in particular the creature itself; it really was an unattractive animal and it peered right back at them with nasty little eyes.

“You have to admit that it's kind of... impressive, though,” murmured Dominique softly, after a long moment's consideration.

“Eh?” asked James in disbelief. “The dragicore?”

The girl shook her head, blonde hair gleaming in the little bit of sunlight slanting in above them through a gap left by the clearing. “No. What Bellatrix did. To impersonate someone for that many years – longer than we've even been alive – and for _nobody to ever notice. _I mean, James, she must have almost believed it herself. Look at you – you've got sneakoscopes and Merlin knows what else around your place in Godric's Hollow and yet she took tea with your parents at least once every holidays! How did she do it? She must have – she really must have almost convinced herself that she _was the real Minerva McGonagall.”_

It was the sort of thing you had to be impressed by, even if it was hateful.

Then Dominique was looking at him in an odd way and asking, “Jamie... How do you think he's doing it?”

“How's who doing what?” he asked gruffly, even though he knew perfectly well what she meant.

“Your Dad... he...”

Dominique watched as the adults, with James' father amongst them, came into the clearing, accompanied by the sound of Hagrid blowing his nose loudly. Harry Potter still had his cloak on and his hood drawn down over his face, and yet here he, was walking and talking as if nothing were the matter. As if he weren't in pain. _As if he weren't blind._

“I don't know...” whispered James. “I don't know how he's doing it. Albus went out of his brain when he saw Dad this morning, and Lily won't even talk to him – she can't talk to him without looking him in the face, and she can't look him in the face without knowing that his...”

“I find it a bit hard too,” admitted Dominique. “But it's not too bad so long as he has his hood down. I can almost forget.”

“Well, I wish I could.”

She gave him a helplessly sympathetic smile, then twitched slightly when the dragicore let out a sudden bellow of rage.

Hagrid was shouting angrily through the bars. “Well you gotta behave better, don't you!?”

“What happened?” the teenagers demanded as they jumped up and ran over to take a closer look.

Charlie had a slightly startled Professor Welsh in his arms; he looked like he'd caught he just a moment before she'd fallen to the Forest Floor. “Er – she got a bit close is all,” said Charlie quickly, but before he could even finish talking she'd shaken his arms off her impatiently, pushed past Hagrid (who was still yelling nonsense at the dragicore, as if it could understand him, or would even care if it did), and, before Charlie could grab her back again, she'd shoved her hand straight through the bars of the cage and snarled in a cold voice, “You will _behave!_”

The ugly creature let out an unhappy mewl as her palm banged against its scales, but it stopped bellowing and, instead, slammed down onto its haunches and hung its head like a terrier who just been told off for tugging at the edge of the tablecloth. It's distressed expression seemed to bother her somewhat, however, because she added a little, “Please”, and rapped it gently, but almost kindly, on the snout before extracting her hand again.

Hagrid and Charlie were gazing at her as if she'd just fallen from the sky wrapped in golden paper and labelled “BEST YULETIDE WISHES”, with their names on the card.

A fact which she completely and utterly ignored.

“Well, that solves that problem,” remarked Professor Longbottom cheerfully enough. “If the bloody beast will shut up then it can stay here – it's just that Hogsmeade residents were starting to complain about the racket it was making, is all.”

“They'll have more to complain about than a bit of noise once word gets out that we've had Bellatrix Lestrange under our noses for the twenty-three years and then let her escape,” observed Welsh coolly.

Harry shifted slightly. “Word won't get out.”

“I beg your pardon?”

James and Dominique stared at the cloaked wizard. He was facing his hood towards the dragicore, but his words were clearly meant for the shocked-looking Professor Welsh.

Neville was even more appalled. “Harry, we have to--”

“Not until we know what she's planning.”

The Gryffindor Head of House grabbed his old friend by one shoulder and shook him slightly. “Harry, this is no different to all those years back when the Minstry kept quiet about Voldemort!”

Harry turned his face to Neville, his mouth, in the darkness of his hood, drawn stern and thin. “I know. But we have to be sure of what she's planning before we start a panic. We have to be sure...”


	33. Games Played

“I'm sorry, Harry, but you're going to have to give me a better answer than that.”

Harry smiled lightly, tension showing only on the way his hands twitched as he reached to detach the other man's grasp from his shoulders. “Is than an 'or else', Neville?”

The Herbology professor smiled back with the same glimmer of quiet danger. Bluntly he answered, “Yes. And if I don't like your answer I'll jolly well tell the world myself. You're not the only one people listen to, you know.”

The teenagers had just enough time to share a worried glance before Harry burst into laughter. “Merlin help us all, that's a good thing too! ...The fact is, Neville, all we know is that she's up to something, but maybe all that is is covering her own backside. After all, she betrayed even her great and precious master, in the end, to save herself – I'm quite convinced that it was seeing her die, supposedly, that made him quite so defeatable. If she'd do even that to keep alive, maybe that's all she wants. Even this,” he pointed towards his upper face, hidden in the shadows, “might just be a way to cover her tracks and gain an advantage over us.”

“And, on the other hand, if she has bigger plans, Harry?” asked Neville.

“Then I doubt that a day or two either way is going to make much of a difference.”

“You sound just like Dumbledore used to...”

There was a silence. It was clear that neither Harry nor Neville were entirely sure whether this were intended as a compliment or not.

“Oh, for the love of _whatever _you hold holy could we please be doing _something?” _complained Welsh.

“That's my girl,” murmured Charlie happily, and almost everyone burst out laughing. The final tautness in the air, left from Neville and Harry's momentary argument, was evaporated by the very sound of it.

Remy shot the dragon-handler a daggered glance. “I'll deal with you later,” she muttered, but though her eyes weren't half as sour as she sounded. “Look, half of the Order are sitting around at Hogwarts cluttering it up – we teachers need to get back to teaching – and I want to taste Bellatrix's blood between my teeth. So can we act?”

“I'm sorry,” interrupted James before he could stop himself, “but you don't actually think there's any part of _her _anatomy which would be worth consuming, do you?”

The teacher graced him with a heated glance. “It's a figure of speech, James. And why aren't you in class, anyway?”

“That would be because it's a Saturday,” offered up Dominique with a wicked half-smile.

“Hmm. So what's the plan?” This was directed back at James' father.

“For you, at the moment, it's business as usual. Relatively.” They started to walk back towards the main castle grounds, listening as Harry spoke. “Remy, I want to be the replacement Headmistress for now. No buts,” he added even as she opened her mouth to protest. “The only other logical choice is Neville, and I need him more immediately accessible to me, not to mention that replacing the dead Headmistress with the Hero of Hogwarts would make people look up and notice. You, no offence, they'll be more interested in the _appearance _of. That, and it will save us the petty inter-house bickering that would arise if I picked anyone other than Neville.”

“I'm sorry,” Welsh said, “but how is this your decision at all? Is Hogwarts run by the Auror Department? When you wanted me on staff it had to be approved by the Board and...”

“Let's just say we'll worry about the technicalities later. Besides, half of the School Board are Order families anyway and, to put it bluntly, I have the Minister's ear on this one.”

Remy didn't look even remotely pleased. “What about my lessons?”

“Keep them going,” he advised. “Delegate the Headmistress stuff, if you so wish. Because... if there's even the slightest chance that the world's about to go balls up I'd be happier knowing that, at the least, every student in Hogwarts has basic defensive training and – Remy? Start on the wandless magic.”

“Are you sure?” she sounded doubtful.

Dominique and James gazed at Harry wide-eyed; so, for that matter, did Charlie, Hagrid and Neville.

He just nodded. “You know what we talked about. I still mean it.”

She nodded sharply. “And anything else?”

He paused. “Yes. The Yule Ball.”

“Cancel it?”

“The opposite. She made such a fuss about it that it'd look strange if we didn't honour what will appear to be one of Minerva McGonagall's last wishes. Speaking of which,” he put his hand to James' shoulder. “Your mother wants you and Albus to meet her in Hogsmeade next weekend to get fitted for dressrobes. I take it you have a partner?”

There was a stony silence; Dominique moved a step away from James, who shot her a furtively embarrassed look.

“Not yet,” muttered the dark-haired boy. “I mean sort of – um – alreadyaskedsomeonebutshehasn'tansweredy

et.”

Harry chuckled. “That complicated, huh? And you're only sixteen... I can see we're going to have another Teddy on our hands. It was definitely less complex when we were young. We all just married our best friends.” And he laughed.

At that moment Dominique wanted nothing better than to glare her uncle into tiny little pieces but, on the other hand, she still felt bad about how embarrassed James must be feeling, and so she snapped, a little cattily,“Oh, I never realised you married Uncle Ron.”

Harry's laugh spluttered out while the other grown-ups burst into grins.

Dominique opened her mouth again in answer to the thankful little smile James had given her but, as soon as her answering smile had appeared, it died, and her expression warped into one of utter horror as she shrieked, “UNCLE PERCY!”

Which was, actually, the last thing James would hear for quite a while because the next moment he felt a thud against the back of his head, and collapsed at her feet. Or, rather, where her feet had been a moment earlier, because she went flying sideways with – it has to be said – an odd grace, given the circumstances. Not that it was the moment for observations about grace.

“Get out of here!” barked Uncle Harry, but perhaps she didn't hear him.

All hell had broken loose.

Dark figures had dropped down all around them from the tree canopy, falling like cats to the mouldy leaf matter. They seemed to release a flurry of light, as if they were using Stunning spells, but somehow not quite. Then they stood, dead silent.

Dominique clutched her wand in her shaking hand and stared around her, though she barely knew which direction to gaze in. There were seven dark forms circled around them, and now only she, Professor Welsh, and Uncle Harry remained standing in the centre. The three of them backed in towards each other, stepping carefully over the still bodies of Hagrid, James, Neville and the half-dozen wizards who'd been disputing about the dragicore. Near the middle of the circle, and meaning that Dominique was forced to step over him as she walked, lay Uncle Percy's body – the body that had dropped from the trees the second before the figures had – the body that Dominique had seen fall and which was so clearly _not Stunned. _

Stunning doesn't usually involved having your head half-severed.

He reminded Dominique of a caricature of Nearly Headless Nick. She fought a hysterical urge to laugh and then an equally hysterical urge to scream. His eyes, too, were wrong.

She wasn't even sure, now that she stood on the other side of him, now that she closer, how it was that she'd even known who it was. Intuition, perhaps, or the robes he was wearing, or--

Her teeth were stinging from being clenched and she let out a small, sharp cry as something warm and solid hit her shoulder. Then she realised that it was the left shoulder of her Defence Against the Dark Arts professor: they'd reached the centre of the silent circle.

“Somebody is playing games,” observed Welsh with such coolness that Dominique wanted to turn around and rip _her _eyes out too, except that now she had her uncle's warm side against her too, and didn't dare move from the security of it.

“Games... seven cloaked figures, silent, like a heptagram's points around us. One sacrifice in the centre. And three... three has always been a significant number.”

“It smacks of Muggle paganism,” muttered Uncle Harry.

Remy clearly wasn't listening because she continued instead, “But why we three? I don't think we were just 'lucky'. I don't know about you, but I've not even had so much as a curse aimed in my direction. I saw one almost hit Miss Weasley but that was because, in her panic, she nearly jumped into the path of that which was intended for Professor Longbottom. You, Harry Potter, I can understand. And I have a vendetta with Bellatrix, who I can only assume is behind this. But the girl...?”

“You are wrong,” hissed a voice, and it came like the waves of the sea, soft and sinuous, not from one of the figures but seemingly from all seven. “We do not come from the witch Bellatrix Lestrange, though she knows of us and would use us to her own end... we come of our own volition... for our own purposes...”

“What do you want?” demanded Uncle Harry.

“Not you, Sightless Who-Still-Sees... nor the Bone-Of-Dog-Bearer... we seek the Seer...”

Dominique felt her guts clench and lurch. “Oh Merlin. _It's all my fault._ The prophecy – McGonagall – Bellatrix – she heard that damned prophecy...!”


	34. The Seer, The Sightless And The Shaman

“What prophecy?” demanded Harry and Professor Welsh in the same moment.

Dominique could feel her mind spinning. “The – the – oh... I was mucking around with James and Ophelia in the Hall last year, and I hit my head, at least, I _thought_ I hit my head... when I came to, the Headmistress was there, and James said I was a nutter, and Ophelia – well, I didn't take them seriously – I thought they were being idiots and that McGonagall was just being nice as usual and—” Dominique's voice had risen to an almost-wail, as she babbled, but dropped away abruptly as all seven figures advanced another step closer towards the centre of the circle.

“The prophecy that gladdened the heart of Bellatrix Lestrange,” whispered and sang the one voice that belonged to all seven, seeming to wash up around the base of Dominique's trembling throat. “The girl does not remember because they never do, not the real ones, not those with the true gift... how few they are, how uncommon... not in this part, not around here, not since you were a child, Sightless One...”

“Trelawney,” muttered Harry.

Welsh stared at him. “That idiot has the gift?”

“Twice,” he answered, inwardly still irritated at the Divination professor for all the trouble she had unintentionally caused him. He neither liked nor trusted divination, and his inclination against it only increased as time passed. He had even moved, in fact, that it be removed from the school's curriculum completely, but the Headmistress hadn't stood for it...

“I haven't got the gift!” managed Dominique, her wand shaking aimlessly since she didn't know which direction to point it in. “It's a load of claptrap! I only took the class because it was a walkover!”

The figures advanced another step forwards and sighed in unity, like a river rushing. “When Bellatrix Lestrange heard the prophecy the seer spoke, her heart leapt inside her... she summoned us... the seven... to tell her if it were true and what it meant, and we answered...”

“Speak the prophecy!” Harry demanded.

“We take no orders from you, Sightless,” they purred at him. “How is it you see, when you are without eyes...?”

Harry didn't answer.

Welsh raised her wand. “You recognise this. You called me dog-bone-wielder. You know me, and I know you too. I know what you are and you _will listen to me._ I known you and I name you. You are Matariki; you are Pleiades.”

They let out a soft hush of air around her; Dominique could actually feel her hair lift slightly off of her shoulders then fall back down again.  
“So we are. The dog-bone-wielder, the shaman, she speaks true. But the shaman is knit with darkness and can barely control herself, let alone control us. If you try, you shall shatter, spirit-talker...”

Remy breathed in. “As a request then... Speak the prophecy, I ask of you as one asks of her own kin.”

The voice of them rose and fell like sea water against a pier beneath moonlight, and then hummed as though debating in a tongue she did not understand, or perhaps talking in some other place and, for the first time, she realised it was not the sound of water but of vast night sky, brought down to ground level. The Pleiades... weren't those the name of stars... but that wasn't possible.

And then they spoke again, so that she could hear. “Distant kin... more distant from ourselves than the seer is from the Veela, further from us than the Sightless from the man who stole our sister... and yet we shall speak because you ask us in this way... shaman.”

There was a pause and the air grew breathless around them, the fallen bodies of their companions rising up and circling around them like an uncanny planetarium in swing, Percy in the middle and gaping blankly down at the ground. And then the voice-of-many, deep and vast, deep and vast like the touch of space beyond the reach of any sun, spoke:

“_Issue of the present will be founder of the past:  
Where those lines meet life intersects.  
At the moment of return the issue of the past  
Is renewed into the future of the present  
As bloodlines knit impossibilities.  
Then shall the true heir to Merlin arise;  
Then shall the die be cast–  
He who controls the Heir, controls the present,  
He who controls the present, controls the past,  
And he who controls the past, controls the future.”_

“I really said that...” managed Dominique in a startled voice, as though hearing it from these seven beings had made it real to her for the very first time. “I – no wonder James couldn't make heads nor tails of it. _I _don't even know what that means.”

Professor Welsh motioned the girl to silence, and addressed the seven-in-one again. “Will you tell us the interpretation that you gave to Bellatrix Lestrange?”

“No,” they murmured and their negative was a black hole, abrupt as the air that flew apart from them, leaving a vacuum as the bodies of the fallen wizards dropped to the ground. Then the figures vanished.

Maybe the others hadn't been Stunned exactly, or maybe the impact of their fall had woken them, because they all sat up, except of course Percy, and started shouting at the top of their lungs in a cacophony of noises but--

“QUIET!” roared Uncle Harry. “Somebody give me parchment and a quill. I need to write something down.”

Oddly enough, it was Hagrid who supplied the necessary items. Dominique watched as the first words of her prophecy appeared on the parchment in Uncle Harry's familiar handwriting, and then she shook off the remaining fall of dreamworld stardust that had sunken over her, and ran to James, falling onto her knees at his side and asking, “Are you alright?”

He looked dozy and sat up slowly, rubbing at the back of his head. “Yeah... Feel like I just got dropped down the stairs again, though, only minus the broken legs and I – oh, shite, Dominique, is that...?” He was staring towards Uncle Percy.

“Yes,” she answered rapidly, and then moved so that he couldn't see Percy's broken body any more. He tried to look around her, but she grabbed a hank of his black hair and pulled hard at it, to make him face her again. “_Yes,” _she repeated in a quiet voice. “It _is_ Uncle Percy and James, trust me when I say that you don't want a better look. Just go with me on that. Please.”

He stared at her and for a moment she thought he was going to push her away and look despite her warning, but then he put his hand up, gently disconnected her fingers from his hair and asked, “He's dead? And... his eyes taken?”

Dominique nodded mutely.

Behind her she could hear Hagrid start to cry as Charlie suggested, in a dull voice, that the pair of them carry the dead Weasley up to the groundkeeper's hut, since it wasn't a sight for children. Over the noise of the half-giant's sobbing she could also hear the dragicore wizards shouting to each other as they attempted, in vain, to find aggressors (as if they would be hiding in the bushes), and then Remy's voice saying, “Why's she still here?”

“What?” asked Neville, who was rubbing his head in a very similar way to James. “Who?”

“Dominique Weasley. The seven said they had come for her, and then all they did was repeat her prophecy and leave. What were they playing at?”

James' Dad must have finished writing at that point because he turned and suggested, “Perhaps because you Named them, Remy. Maybe they didn't want to put to the test whether you really would shatter or not if you took them on.”

“More likely they didn't want to test my suicide wish,” she snorted.

And the pair of them explained events to Neville.

Dominique sat silently as they did so and allowed James to hear; it was easier than explaining matters herself.

“But what does it mean?” asked Neville at the end.

James and Dominique stood up and walked over numbly. “That's what I'd like to know,” muttered the girl unhappily.

Harry wasn't really listening. He kept repeating the words of the prophecy to himself, mouthing them without making a sound. Dominique's eyes went back to the parchment in his hand, and she blinked. The part of the text which she had watched him write was as neat as day, but then, at the point where she'd left to tend to James, it turned into an almost illegible scrawl.

“How are you doing it?” she asked suddenly, but he didn't answer her any more than he had answered the Pleiades.

Instead he said, “Let's go show this to Sybil. She might be mad as a hatter but it is her field. And – and Hermione too, if she's still at Hogwarts. And then – and then I think you and I need to have a long talk to Professor Welsh, Dominique.” That sounded rather ominous and, for the first time, Dominqiue wondered whether her uncle didn't know as much about the New Zealander as he made out. After all, _Dominique _knew what the Pleiades had meant when they'd spoken of dark things and the professor.

Either way, the blonde girl's head was so full of thoughts that they'd reached the steps leading into the castle before she'd realised that James was still holding her hand, that he'd earlier disentangled from his hair...


	35. The Family Gathered

“There are a lot of things that make no sense about funerals,” muttered Lily Potter, as she carried a platter laden with fruit slices through the dark-robed crowd.

“Yeah? What's that then?” asked Hugo, his cheeks stuffed, like a hamster's, with raisin loaf from his own plate, which he was clearly eating faster than he could serve it out.

Lily gave him a disgusted look.

“Well. Firstly, the weather. You'd think, given that it's the start of winter, they could have found a properly miserable day instead of the first nice one we've had in _ages_. I mean, it's not like anyone's going to enjoy it, and it hardly suits the mood, does it?”

“And what would they do with Uncle Percy in the meantime, then?” demanded Hugo, crumbs spilling out of his mouth and down his robes, onto the floor, perfect for being stomped mercilessly into his Grandma Weasley's rugs. “But I reckon you're right, he'd have thought like that too; would've wanted it rotten-wet.”

“'xactly,” said Lily, happy that they'd seen eye to eye on that point. “Then there's the fact that you wouldn't know you were a funeral at all, would you? I mean, where's the _solemnity?_” She pronounced the word in carefully enunciated syllables and glared around the crowd-crammed room in a distinctly disapproving way. “Everyone just standing around stuffing their gobs while we do house-elf impersonations...” She punctuated her sentence with a pointed glance at her tubby cousin, clearly trying to make him feel guilty that he was more involved in the former than the later; he didn't notice.

“Sure,” said an Irish voice from somewhere above them, and Lily glanced up to see her Dad's old friend Mr. Finnegan beaming down at her. “And you should see some of the funerals _I've _been to, my dear. There'd be music and dancing if it were my uncle dead, wouldn't there, Nea?”

The woman at his side smiled and nodded over her glass of butterbeer.

Lily sniffed a little pompously, not indeed unlike the uncle whose funeral had just been attended, and added, with a small fierce glance towards the fire place, “If you ask me...”

“Which nobody did...”

“Shut up, Hugo. Anyway, if you ask me, _they're _the worst,” and she took her hand carefully off the platter to point at the group of young witches, who were comparing stories in loud and unashamedly cheerful voices. “Being pregnant at a funeral isn't right,” Lily concluded, as though that were the root to all the world's evils. Then she stomped off to offer slice to her antiquated Great-Great-Something Aunt Muriel, out of the simple, spiteful reasoning that she knew Muriel (who should have been dead decades back and whom everyone theorised frightened Death too much for him to game enough to come and get her) couldn't eat it any more, and Lily wanted to make someone in amongst all this indecent happiness as equally miserable as she was.

Of course, if she'd thought to head out of the cramped lounge and up to the bedroom where her Grandma Weasley sat in amongst a small group of close family, Lily would have found more than enough misery to cheer her up for the next month, but she wasn't to know that.  
Besides, it wasn't strictly true about the young witches by the fireplace, either. Victoire kept mislaying her smile, feeling terrible that she should be happy when another mother were in a state of grief. Not that the company was helping.

“And so,” continued a cousin of Teddy's, about fifteen times removed, whose parental unit had been blasted off of the edges of the Black family tree some generations ago, and was one of the not-few guests who was here for the food and conversation, rather than because she actually cared about the dearest departed, “when are you due?”

Victoire's smile crept back despite itself. “A little after Christmas. Just as well, I'm as big as a house now, it's terribly nuisance-ish. Of course, Teddy's delirious with joy, wanders around with his hair bright as an exclamation mark which, let me tell you, stands out like crazy in – ah – where we're stationed at the moment. He's taken to wearing a head-covering just to stop the stares. Well, it's about time, I said, frankly, seeing as I've been stuck in the traditional dress since we'd arrived there – head to toe, and black as night. Still, it's all part of the job.”

The cousin-uncountable-times-removed wasn't in the least bit interested in Victoire and her husband's mysterious job 'somewhere in the east' (this was always said with an accompanying jab of the thumb in said cardinal point's direction) but cooed instead, “Ooooh, a Yuletide baby, that's marvellous. You know what they say, _born at Yule no wizard's fool.”_

Victoire gave her an odd look. “Well... that's a... useful thing to know. Still, as I said, after Christmas – it could be stubborn like Auntie Ginny's brood and hang around until January.”

“Oh, New Year's then!” exclaimed a redhead, thus presumably a Weasley born and bred. “Well, then, let me think... _baby at Lent is money well spent?_ No, Lent's not until February, isn't it?”

“I think it moves around, depending on when exactly Easter falls,” murmured Victoire. “And Easter depends on the lunar calendar, doesn't it?”

Her eyebrows rose steadily upwards as the conversation, predictably enough, turned to lunar cycles, and predictions based upon which direction leaves spin at midnight when dropped, and she said, with a small cough, “Excuse me, I think I just saw my one-legged Uncle Alfred.”

The other women nodded vaguely whilst she escaped with a small smile.

For a while Victoire wandered through the crowd, nodding at those she didn't know, and avoiding those she did, until she'd finally managed to escape outside. There she found her little sister Dominique in the backyard, rocking gently back and forth on one of the swings. The eldest of the Potter boys gave her a push now and then, and the two of them were apparently deep in private conversation, because it ground to a sudden halt the moment Victoire walked into earshot.

“If I'm bothering you, I'll leave,” she said quickly “I just had to get away from the baby-club, is all.”

Dominique smiled and shook her head. “There's there's a second swing if...?”

“If I'm not too fat?” finished Victoire with a chuckle. “I've seen Rubeus Hagrid sit on that swing, Dee, I think it'll take me.” Tthen she paused. “On the other hand, I might opt for a sunnier position. Just to be on the safe side.” She made herself as comfortable as you can when you're on the other side of eight months pregnant, and sitting on a large, flat rock, and then pointed towards the Burrow's eccentric top storey and asked, “Not upstairs with the rest of them?”

Dominique and James exchanged an uncomfortable shrug.

“Couldn't cope with more crying,” muttered the boy. “It's not that I'm not sad Uncle Percy's gone but... I mean, the blubbering won't bring him back, will it?”

Victoire sighed. “I'm afraid that's rather how I feel. Or, at least, I hope that's all it is, with me. Would I be crying if it were... I don't know... Uncle Ron in the cemetery? I suppose I'm just not very good at believing people are actually _gone_. I keep expecting old Percy to coming around the corner and demand why Teddy and I don't get 'properly married.' He never did accept that that Haitian ceremony could be binding...”

“I keep hoping he _won't_,” muttered Dominique with a faint tremor.

“Pardon?”

“Walk around the corner,” clarified the girl. “I keep hoping he won't.”

Victoire looked at her sister sympathetically. “You were both there when the body, ah...?”

“Dropped out of the sky in the middle of the clearing? Yeah.”

“I'm sorry, sweetie. It's not nice, your first one. It gets... tolerable, after long enough.”

James blinked. “Vicky... what the hell do you and Teddy actually _do_?”

She grinned. “If I told you, I'd have to kill you, and I see no reason to add to my sister's dead body collection too soon – I – oh! - Dominique – I'm sorry, it was just a joke...”

Her sister had lurched, ashen faced, off of the swing and was running for leather down towards the orchard.

James let out a low curse and bolted after her, with a dirty look as farewell to his best friend's sister.

“Bugger,” muttered the pregnant part-Veela.

“Spoilt their half-holiday already, did you, Vic?” inquired her husband's voice above her.

Victoire stood up and rolled her eyes. “I doubt that spending your day away from Hogwarts for the sake of a funeral is much of a holiday, Teddy.” She sighed as he put his arm around her. “Sometimes I think we should find a different career. It's making me forget how other people see the world, you know? And with a child...”

He put his hand lower around her and touched her belly protectively. “It'll be worth it. You'll see.” And he kissed her the tip of her nose until she smiled.


	36. Bitter Little Apples

It took James a moment or so to spot her, even though he'd seen her running in through the orchard's crooked gate, because she'd tucked her knees up to her chin beneath the branches of a broken-down looking willow that someone, for some mysterious Weasley-reason, had decided to let take root in the furthest corner. He caught his fingers on the gate, watching her, and then approached with caution, seeing as she had drawn her wand and was making small, red sparks shoot from the tip of it, by banging the other end repeatedly against her leg.

“Meeks...” he began, and she looked up at him. He'd expected to find her crying but instead she was angry, furiously, furiously angry.

“How could she say that?” his best friend demanded in an unusually shrill voice. “How could she say that!? _My collection of dead bodies_, what?” Words seemed to fail her. A particularly large spark shot out the end of her wand; James dodged it, and watched as it made the damp winter grass smoke.

“Maybe you should put the wand away,” he advised, in a preternaturally calm voice, and then plonked himself down beside her on the ground. 'I don't think your sister was thinking about what she was saying.”

“Oh, and because that's so unusual for Vic, eh? We should all just ignore it, right? She's always saying dumb crap like that. It's Dad's sense of humour coming out, and his is awful, and it's even worse in her because he at least _acts_ normal in public.”

“I thought you'd run off crying,” he admitted simply, for no other reason than that his Uncle Bill cracking jokes just wasn't an easy thing to visualise.

Dominique paused her wand in mid-air. “Well – maybe I did,” she admitted, in a wobbly voice, and then slammed it back down, sending more sparks shooting.

“Do I have to disarm you?” he asked.

She glanced sideways. “Like to see you try. Me, I disarmed Bellatrix Lestrange. Only good thing I've done all term. And even then she only needed disarming in the first place because the joy bells had rung in her head about that stupid prophecy I made.”

“Which was hardly your fault. It's not like you swan around like Ophelia and Madison, begging for divination skills all the time. Speaking of which, has Aunt Hermione gotten any closer to deciphering it?”

Dominique glowered. “Not really. She keeps on insisting that it's about Rose and Scorpius vanishing into the past – you know, the whole 'when present becomes founder' or whatever it says. Your Dad's a bit sceptical, worrying she's spinning her own grief into it. I heard him tell Neville's he's going to give a copy to someone in the Department of Mysteries as well, to see what they come up with.”

“It would be weird if it _were _about Mal and Rose, wouldn't it? Because I mean – isn't the Heir of Merlin in it somewhere too?”

Dominique nodded. “Yes, but, actually, I'll bet Aunt Hermione's right. Too damned weird a thing to happen and _nobody_ prophesy it and – wasn't Rose always bleating on about the prophet Samuel?”

They fell silent and James plucked an apple from a nearby tree, using his wand, and took a bite. It wasn't very nice.

Dominique laughed at the face he pulled, which made him laugh, and then he started choking on his mouthful and she had to thump him on the back. He sat there with watery eyes and spluttered, “Thanks.”

“You're welcome,” she said automatically and then looked away, a little embarrassed for no reason that she could put her finger on, well, except one obvious one but--

“Meeks?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“He said I was supposed to let you make the first move but...”

She fastened her eyes back upon him. “Eh? Who said?”

He blushed Weasley-red. “Ah, Uncle Charlie. I – you know – after the Room of Requirement I – I wanted to talk to someone and – I know I shouldn't have...”

“Is it about moves, then?” she asked abruptly, interrupting his floundering.

“What?”

“Moves. Is it about moves, like in a game?”

He didn't like the tone she'd said that in, so he shook his head. “No. It's about me wanting you to go to the Yule Ball with me.”

She was doing an awfully good impersonation of a girl who was looking straight through him, and he shifted uncomfortably.

“I asked you not to move the goal posts,” she said eventually. “But it was already too late for that, wasn't it? The minute you opened your mouth...”

She looked angry, and his eyes flickered nervously towards her wand.

She saw his gaze, and shook her head crankily. “Oh, James, you idiot. I'm not going to say yes! Don't you get it? If I go to the Ball with you then everyone – everyone will think we aren't best friends any more, but something different, and--”

“Is that such a terrible thing?” he demanded curtly.

She blew up a low-hanging crab apple with a small angry snarl, and a flick of her wand, and then glared at him. “Only if it doesn't work out, James! And then it's the most terrible thing ever!”

It took him a few seconds to understand what her words meant: by that time she'd jumped to her feet and was storming off. “_Impedimenta!_” he shouted and she came to a halt, suddenly – he had to jump to make sure she didn't land on the ground, which, he suspected, really mightn't help his case any. Then he took her wand from her fist, shoved it into his pocket, and removed the spell.

“You – you - you – you _arrogant--” _she shouted. “Don't think I need a wand to kill you!”

James grabbed her hands and held them tightly; she was strong but he, the Quidditch captain, was stronger. “Just blood shut up for once, would you? I want to try and work out if you just said what I think you said and I'm a guy, I need a minute.”

She looked petulant. “I'm not repeating it.”

He grinned. “I didn't figure you would but... are you saying,” he asked quietly, “that the reason you won't say yes to going to the Ball with me is that that would make you my girlfriend, and you don't want to be my girlfriend because, if it goes belly up, then we won't be friends any more, and you couldn't bear the thought of that?”

She stared at him angrily, which he took as a_ yes._

“Fine. What I don't get is why going to the Ball must automatically make you my girlfriend and, more importantly... why you think we'd be any less brilliant as a couple than we are as cronies.”

She cocked her head to one side and looked at him intently, weighing up her words. Or, possibly, he thought wryly, choosing how best to attack him.

When she spoke, her voice was dangerous. “The first question has a simple answer: _because. _Because it just would, James Potter, and you know it. We've skirted around that for years now. If we do something like go to a dance then we're - we're in the role. That... that and the fact that, seconds after you asked me, you started talking about bloody marriage!”

“That was a stuff-up!”

“Whatever. The point is, if you go to the Ball with me, you're my boyfriend, James, not my best friend.”

“But that's just...” he paused, and then asked, in a slightly strangled tone, “Can't I be both?”

She looked at him long and hard. “I suppose it's _possible_. Vic and Teddy, they're friends too, I mean, really friends, partners-in-crime type mates. But... it's afterwards that's impossible. Once you've been more, you can't go back, James. Once we've been – more – we can't ever just be friends again, and if it dies then...” She faltered, and rubbed her hand angrily across her eyes. “See? This is what I meant! You've changed all the rules!”

He relaxed his grasp slightly, and rubbed his thumbs against her wrists. “No. I haven't. The rules are what they always were. You and me against the world, Meeks. I don't know about you, but I don't feel any differently about you than I ever did, and you can make of that what you will. But you know what, I don't think you've considered one small point.”

She looked up at him, looking down at her, and her breath caught. “What?”

“Don't you think that, just imagining it did work, don't you think you and me would be worth all the trouble?”

And he tilted his head down and in, towards her.


	37. Truth's Out

“Oi!” called Uncle Charlie's voice from the gate at the Orchard. “Your folks—” He came to a dead halt, and looked mortified, as he saw James fall backwards onto the ground and away from the girl he had _clearly _been about to kiss. “Shite, sorry,” began the dragon wranger, “if I'd known, I'd—”

Dominique turned scarlet. She aimed a nasty kick at the fallen James, making him wince as her boot connected with his ankle, and hissed, “Now do you see what I mean?”

Inwardly, Charlie was beating himself over the head with a bludger. Outwardly, he said simply, “Your folks sent me to find you. They want to take you all back to school, now.”

“Right,” said Dominique quickly, and she stormed out of the orchard, past her Uncle whilst avoiding his gaze and headed towards The Burrow.

James flopped back onto the ground with a groan and put his hands over his eyes. “Just kill me now, Uncle Charlie, it'd be simpler for everyone involved.”

Charlie came into the orchard and offered the boy his hand. “Upsadaisy, old man. You'll live to fight another round yet.”

James took his hand, let himself to be pulled to his feet, and then dusted down his robes.

“That mean she said yes to going to the Ball?” Charlie asked conversationally as they headed back towards the Burrow themselves.

“Nope,” muttered James in a tired voice. “We – er – hadn't really gotten to that bit yet.”

“I really am sorry,” repeated his uncle.

James, who had in the heat of the moment wanted rather nothing more than to leap off the ground and punch his uncle square in the face, now gave a small helpless smile and mumbled, “Not your fault, is it?”

When they arrived in the laundry, where his parents, Uncle Ron, and a scattering of others – plus the kids – were waiting, Dominique refused to look at him. She actually crossed her arms and turned her back on him. It hurt inside, so he asked, as if he didn't care at all, “Where's Aunt Hermione?”

His mother exchanged a sad glance with Uncle Ron. Most of his mother's smiles were sad, he'd noticed– he supposed that losing Uncle Percy had taken it out of her, and his Dad's eyelessness had probably hit her hardest of all of them. For the first time he wondered, with a burst of righteousness indignation on his mother's behalf, why in earth his Dad couldn't just get some magical eyes or, at the very least cover the ghastly blankness with something a little more efficient than a low pulled hood.

“Your Aunt went back to Hogwarts on her own,” answered Ginny. “She's been given permission to continue scouring the library. She's... still sure that your prophecy, Dominique, is about poor Rosie and, well, anyway, dear, you have a nice rest of term, although I know that's asking a lot.” And she hugged both her sons quickly. “I'll send your dress robes along later, Jamie.”

Dominique's back grew even straighter at the mention of her ill-fated prophecy and Ginny, who had an eye for that kind of thing, gave it a quick, curious glance. Then Dominique's parents arrived and said their goodbyes, and those who were leaving, left.

*

Hogsmeade was as familiar to James as his own home in Grimmauld Place, seeing as he'd spent practically every weekend in the small, magical town since he'd been allowed to and, even before that, had been on regular visits there, with his parents, to see his 'Uncle' Neville and 'Auntie' Hannah. He knew the small streets, and where they ended, and the names of the little alleys and family store-fronts, and he really quite loved them a lot but – but the Hogsmeade into which they Apparated (and Side-Along Apparated) was not the Hogsmeade he remembered ever having seen before.

Despite the fact that it was a Tuesday, and not late in the day at all, most of the shops had a closed-up look to them, and residents gathered outside their neighbour's doors in small, whispery groups. When Harry, Ron, Charlie, and the accompanying children, appeared in the middle of the High Street, they found themselves the objects of some very strange looks indeed. The weird little sideways glances thrown at them made Dominique's skin crawl, and she watched as many people retreated abruptly indoors, whilst others crept a little further forwards, expressions on their faces seeming to indicate that they were about to see some grand spectacle. Her uncles were muttering loudly and then, even as the wave of sudden, bone-wrenching cold hit her, Harry and Ron, and Charlie a second later, bellowed out, “_Execto patronum!_”

A stag, a terrier, and a slightly scruffy-looking dragon took shape and danced nervously around before them.

Dominique could make out shadowy figures at the end of the High Street.

All the remaining observers retreated away behind the deceptive safety of closed doors.

Harry murmured, “No... not possible...”

Dominique sought her own wand, without avail, vaguely remembered in a panic that she didn't have it again, and then, in the momentum of what happened next, forgot clean about it.

“What the _hell_ is going on?” continued Harry, perhaps more questioning himself, or the universe at large, than any specific person but, as if in answer, a wizard appeared a few metres away from the silver creatures; a wizard whom none of the children were familiar with. Their uncles, however, apparently knew him quite well. He was tall, more than six feet, and the fact that he was surely in his late sixties had had no noticeable impact upon his powerfully built figure beneath the long, dark robes which he wore. And he was smiling, rather unpleasantly, from behind his beard.

“Runcorn,” said Harry softly. “I don't suppose you fancy explaining why there are Dementors in Hogsmeade, considering their presence in the general wizarding world was outlawed over twenty years ago?”

Runcorn's smile hardened and thinned at the same time. “I'm afraid I have to inform you that rather a lot has happened in the last few days, Auror. Been out of the loop, haven't you, over there at your little funeral. Family and friends all tucked away to mourn the untimely death of Percy Weasley, and what a loss he will be to the magical community. My regrets from the Ministry.”

Ron surged forwards at the disparaging tone of the man's voice, and Charlie made a dull growling noise, but hauled his younger brother backwards. The wizard didn't seem to have noticed, or thought it beneath him if he had. He traced the nasty red scar that moved the whole length of his face and made his lips twist almost obscenely. “It was Percy Weasley who gave me this little memento, you know,” he mused. “Think of him every time I look in the mirror...”

Dominique and the other children breathed in slightly at this – so Runcorn must have been at the Battle of Hogwarts, presumably, because where else was Uncle Percy likely to have maimed somebody? Runcorn, then, must have been one of the Death Eaters who's allegiance had never been proven beyond doubt...

“But what are you babbling about, man?” asked Harry, not taking Runcorn's bait. “What's happened since I've been away from the Ministry?”

The man smiled again. “The wizarding community has had its eyes opened, Harry Potter. Did you think that you could conceal something as large as the fact that the Dark Lord's most loyal supporter has been hiding low at Hogwarts for all these years? Or what about the fact that you know – at the most, suspected – that, and even had spies following her around, and yet didn't do a thing to stop the witch from escaping...”

Harry and Charlie exchanged a glance.

Runcorn smiled. “The public has turned against you, Potter, and your puppet Ministry with it. The Minister stepped down this morning. I'm pleased to announce that the position of Acting Minister has so _surprisingly _been given to me. Don't think we haven't all known the way that you've run everything from your Auror Department, and your lackeys at Howgarts, Potter. Everyone expected you to go for Minister of Magic years ago, but you were much too much like Dumbledore, you'd rather play from off of the page. Well, I'm afraid the game's over and all the filthy washing is about to come out into the sunlight. Like the dirty little Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher you installed, and her nasty little habits—”

Charlie hissed, _“Remy,”_ and a second later Apparently away, presumably to the nearest secret passageway where he could get into Hogwarts quickly, seeing as you couldn't Apparate there directly.

Runcorn laughed. “Indeed, there seems to be a lot of the Dark Arts in amongst the your precious Order nowadays. What about your godson? What about _you__?_ Did you think you coulod keep your missing eyes a secret, Potter, and how you're dealing with them? You flaunt them publicly enough! Don't get me wrong, I finding it awfully ironic, really, that you would—”

“My Dad doesn't do Dark Arts! And nor does Teddy!” shouted Albus angrily, shoving his way out from behind his older brother, who was staring at him in disbelief; the younger boy pulled his wand out as though he were intending on duelling Runcorn, but the wizard just laughed and disarmed him.

“Want to walk in Daddy's shoes, do you, boy? You know you could end in Azkaban for attacking the Ministr of Magic. Maybe by Yule we'll have a family wing there for the Potters alone.” He glanced at Harry. “I presume you'll come without a fight?”

Then a number of things happened.

Ron shouted, “_Protego!” _in the general direction of the children and bellowed something about running – Harry mumbled something about 'people always making that mistake', and shot a Stunning curse at Runcorn – and then the uncles vanished and their patronuses faltered. Lily let out a shriek and James send his own Patronus stalking down the street at full-pace whilst Dominique grabbed the two youngest children by the arms and set off for the first safe place she could think of – the Hog's Head pub.

If Runcorn had wanted to stop them he could have. Instead, he just laughed and let them go...


End file.
